Julie Kirkbride: What representations has the Secretary of State made to the Chancellor on allowing some of the bandwidth that will become available following analogue switch-off to go terrestrial channels in order to allow the country to view high-definition television? She will be aware that some countries already have high-definition TV, and when we host the Olympics in 2012, it is vital that everybody in the United Kingdom who is watching terrestrial channels can see the glory of London and, hopefully, of our athletes on high-definition television.

Tessa Jowell: In a similar spirit, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench and wish him and his team a happy Christmas? We will resume Dispatch Box hostilities in the new year. We agree with a number of the recommendations in the House of Lords report and will take them into account as we finalise the White Paper on the BBC's charter. However, the recommendation that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned is not one of those that I accept. As I have said to my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt), wherever the costs of switchover fall, they are broadcasting costs, which should be met by the broadcasters and ultimately through the licence fee.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Minister will know that the responsibility for maintaining these licences has shifted from magistrates to local councils, and yet there has been no extra financial help for them. What measures does he intend to take to ensure that they have extra resources to do this—[Interruption.]—particularly in Shrewsbury?

James Purnell: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the Act. There are extra resources. We made it absolutely clear that any extra costs from the implementation of the Act would be covered by fees and we have set up an independent review to look into exactly that. It was very important that we did that, because previously the magistrates courts' budgets were subsidising the licensing of alcohol to the tune of £25 million, and that money was obviously therefore not available for other important activities undertaken by the magistrates.

Stephen Pound: So comprehensive, so fulsome and so welcome were my right hon. Friend's words that the House may well feel that only a bounder could be so churlish as to trespass upon my right hon. Friend's patience by troubling her with a supplementary question. So, will my right hon. Friend join me in commending the positive role also played by the UK Film Council and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in making the co-production treaty happen? Furthermore, will she consider leading a UK business delegation to Asia's largest entertainment summit, Frames, in 2006, to look at ways in which our new co-production relationship with India can be even further strengthened?

James Purnell: The order in which regions will be turned off was decided by Ofcom in consultation with technical experts and was not really a matter for Government. In response to the hon. Lady's question, the point is that it would be inefficient and a waste of taxpayer's money to continue to broadcast in both analogue and digital format. Of course, that money is not for the Treasury but for the taxpayer, and looking after the taxpayers' interests is exactly what we are doing.

Sandra Gidley: Does the Minister agree that role models are all- important? He will be aware that of the just more than £6 million given in athlete personal awards last year, £3.8 million was given to men, but only £2.3 million to women. What is he doing to address that inequality and to increase the participation of women at other levels to feed into the highest level of sport?

Richard Caborn: I do not recall the figures that the hon. Lady has given, but I can tell her that we have an equity agreement with all the governing bodies, which is observed by UK Sport and Sport England. I believe that 44 per cent. of scholarships went to women during the last round of awards under the talented athlete scholarship scheme. As for world-class performance, it will depend on the position held in the world-class rankings by the paralympic and Olympic teams and, indeed, by others in the elite. There is an agreement between the governing bodies on that. I accept that more can be done to encourage females to participate in sport, but I think that that is being achieved by many of the initiatives launched by the governing bodies, Sport England and UK Sport.
	There has been a massive increase—of some 53 per cent.—in the number of women taking part in football over the past three or four years following an investment of some £3 million by the Football Foundation in coaching of women and girls, and a major increase in investment by the active sports body, which is Sport England.—[Interruption.] I do not know what the hon. Lady is saying from a sedentary position, but across the spectrum we have moved the agenda forward dramatically.

David Gauke: It is, potentially. Given that fact, and given that the main purpose is to help to cover the cost that the BBC will incur in facilitating the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting, will not the licence fee be used as yet another stealth tax which will hit the poorest hardest?

Brian Jenkins: My right hon. Friend will know that many people in this country, including myself, believe that the BBC licence fee provides good value for money. In the multi-producer and multi-provider industry that has now developed, however, should not the BBC charter include an obligation continually to assess value for money and to make the public aware of that work? The public could then believe that they do indeed receive value for money from the rather peculiar monopoly position that the BBC enjoys.

Tessa Jowell: No, I do not accept that, and the Government have already announced in the BBC Green Paper that the licence fee will continue to fund the BBC for the next 10 years. The hon. Gentleman says that it is a regressive form of taxation but interestingly, when asked about it, the public, while recognising that it is a flat-rate charge, generally said that they believe that it is good value for money and fair. We will continue with it for the next 10 years.

Michael Fabricant: I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), the current chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, is going down the well-trod path of his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), but I wonder whether I might disagree, in that I believe that the BBC offers good value for money. However, I challenge the Secretary of State on this point: is she aware that the BBC is having to make provision for a spectrum stealth tax in 2013 of £200 million? Will that not put pressure on the licence fee?

Richard Caborn: My hon. Friend makes an important point. Some 70 per cent. of those leaving school do not continue in active sport, and that is a major fault line in the structure of sport in this country, and that is why we have now invested some £60 million, through governing bodies, to strengthen the club structure. The school to club link is very important if we are to have a sustainable—and I mean sustainable—sports infrastructure. The investment that we are putting in through the 400 school sports partnerships, which have been widely welcomed, would be worthless if it did not continue after young people had left school. Therefore, we are working with the national governing bodies to develop the school to club structure.
	I am pleased that all the governing bodies have now signed up to the coaching certificate, which will give us—for the first time—a five-level coaching scheme. We are investing heavily in that and we will have some 3,000 community coaches, who will also work on the school to club link. That shows that we are taking the issue seriously and investing in a sustainable sports infrastructure for the first time for many years.

Robert Key: Will the Church Commissioners publish those helpful figures as a matter of routine? We cannot possibly reduce deeply held views about women priests to financial figures, but given that a lot of angels are flying around this Christmas-time, as well as flying bishops, may we expect an outbreak of peace and goodwill, as well as common sense, as we move on from women priests towards women bishops?

Andy Reed: Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not always just money, but sometimes the interference of English Heritage? A church in my patch has the ability to raise its own funds and to move forward to offer facilities for the local community. However, it is held back by the rather pedantic way in which English Heritage sometimes gets involved in such projects, which holds back churches' ability to make provision for their local communities. Will my hon. Friend ensure that a balance is struck between the need for large parts of our English heritage to remain and the need to ensure that such buildings are used?

Philip Hollobone: Is it not the case that were it not for the good work of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, this wasteful Government would have wasted hundreds of millions of pounds more?

Greg Clark: How many publications have been funded through the policy development grant to each qualifying political party; and what arrangements have been made to give members of the public up-to-date information on the availability of such publications.

Tony Blair: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the European Council in Brussels on 15–16 December.
	The main issue at this European Council was the European Union budget for 2007–13, the first budget ever for the enlarged Europe of 25 member states, soon to become 27 with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania.
	This country can be proud of the part that we played in the enlargement of the EU. The countries of central and eastern Europe that for so long suffered under communist dictatorship are now free democracies and vibrant new members of the EU. I say that to have championed the cause of those new states, to have welcomed them into NATO and Europe and then to have refused to agree a budget that protects their future economic development, would have been a betrayal of everything that Britain has rightly stood for in the past 15 years or more since the fall of the Berlin wall. They are our allies. It is our duty to stand by them. But it is also massively in our national interest. These new member states have fast-growing, open economies, new ideas, human capital and a political vision of Europe that is close to ours.
	However, although they are catching up economically, they are still much poorer than most of the original European Union 15; their people half as wealthy as in the rest of Europe. The purpose of the budget is rightly to transfer resources from the wealthiest west of Europe to the poorer east of Europe. Over the coming years, within a broadly stable budget, funds for the new member states will increase from €24 billion to €174 billion, a seven-fold increase.
	In time, of course, this makes them prosperous and us too. If we look at the example of Ireland and Spain, bilateral trade with those countries in goods alone is now more than €60 billion a year. Investment in the future prosperity and stability of eastern Europe brings big and lasting benefits to this country.
	The reason that it was so important to reach agreement at the European Council is as follows: as all central and eastern European leaders made clear to me, it was essential to have a December deal to allow those countries to plan and prepare for using the EU funds when those funds start in 12 months' time. It was clear that the prospects for a deal next year were negligible, and, if there were to be no deal, then in 2007 the European Parliament would take over the budget process. That would mean the Parliament setting annual budgets, on the existing financial agreements, which would have meant that countries such as Poland would have lost around two thirds of their EU funds. That is why they wanted a deal now.
	Of course, there is also a need for fundamental reform of the EU budget. As I said in June, what we need is to settle the budget on the basis of everyone paying their fair share of the costs of enlargement now; and then to open up the prospect of a radically reformed budget midway through the next budget period. The agreement reached on Saturday morning differed from that of the Luxembourg proposal in four key respects. The overall budget is smaller. The proposal in June was that the UK rebate should be reduced in commitment terms by about €22.5 billion; under this deal, the maximum we shall pay is €10.5 billion. In the review clause in June, the common agricultural policy agreement of 2002 was specifically endorsed. Now it is clear that all aspects of the budget can be examined in 2008–09. However, crucially for Britain, this agreement states expressly—unlike that of June—that the British rebate remains in full on all expenditure in the original 15 member states. It remains in full on all common agricultural policy market expenditure everywhere in the Union, including in the new member states. We have, however, agreed to disapply a proportion of the rebate on structural and cohesion spending in the new member states—in effect, on the spending directly designed for economic development. As I have said, the cost of this is up to a maximum of €10.5 billion or about £7 billion over the next seven years of the financing period. Moreover, because the rebate stays on all common agricultural policy and all spending in the original European 15, the rebate will rise, not fall, to an average of €5.8 billion in payments terms annually from 2007. Overall, the rebate will get us about €41 billion back in the next budget period—substantially more than in this period. That is then the crucial leverage for future reform.
	As the strongest supporter of enlargement among all member states, I strongly believe that it was right—indeed, essential—that the UK should contribute properly to enlargement. The fact is that if we support and, indeed, drive through a policy of ending the post-war division of Europe, we have to be ready to accept our fair share of the costs of that policy. Enlargement was never, and could never be, a cost-free policy, and this Government are prepared to shoulder their responsibilities in this area, because it is the right thing to do. In this context, I want to dispel one misunderstanding that has arisen—the impression that only the UK is contributing to the costs of enlargement. All wealthier countries are contributing. In terms of net contributions, our contribution will increase by 63 per cent. over the next financing period in comparison with 2000–06. France's contribution will increase by 124 per cent. Italy's contribution will increase by 126 per cent. Spain will lose in the region of €40 billion. Moreover, after some 20 years of our paying, under the original rebate, twice as much as France, UK and French contributions will, from 2007, for the first time, be in rough parity. Because the UK economy is now bigger than the French economy, we will, in fact, on the Commission's figures, be contributing a smaller share of our national wealth.
	Alongside this agreement on support for the modernisation of eastern Europe, we also agreed on a fundamental review of all aspects of the EU budget, including the common agricultural policy, to be led by President Barroso, with the recommendation that it begin in 2008. As the language in the European Council conclusions makes absolutely clear, it is then possible for changes to be made to this budget structure in the course of this financing period. This will also allow us to take account of any changes agreed in the World Trade Organisation round, including the decision to phase out all export subsidies for agriculture by 2013. In addition, it was agreed that any CAP spending for Romania and Bulgaria—about €8 billion—should be fitted within existing CAP ceilings, which is a significant budgetary discipline.
	So to summarise, when people ask what we got for agreeing to pay our fair share of enlargement, the answer is an agreement that sees us, for the first time since we joined the EU, paying no more than similar countries, such as France and Italy; the rebate staying put on all CAP spending and rising, not falling, in value; and a process that can, in the years to come, lead to the necessary fundamental reform of both rebate and CAP that we all want to see.
	I should report briefly that the Council also agreed on a strategic partnership between the European Union and Africa, on a new and strengthened policy on illegal migration and on a counter-terrorism plan. We also agreed that Macedonia should be granted candidate status—the next step in its path towards membership of the European Union. As a strong supporter of Macedonia's ambitions, I want to congratulate the Macedonian Government on the progress that they have made towards that goal.
	The European Council also unreservedly condemned the Iranian President's recent remarks about Israel and warmly welcomed the 15 December elections in Iraq as a further step towards democracy and stability in that country.
	Over the past six months, the UK presidency has delivered the historic launch of accession negotiations—[Interruption.] It has delivered the launch of accession negotiations with Turkey and Croatia—a long-standing British objective. We have delivered a number of important pieces of legislation, including the REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—regulations and the data retention directive, which is an important measure against terrorism. We have delivered reform of the EU sugar regime and a strengthening of the EU position on climate change—[Interruption.]

David Cameron: This was the year that Europe needed to change direction; this was the year that the people of Europe rejected the constitution; and this was the year that people called for the end of the obscenity of protectionism that damages the developing world. The Prime Minister rightly talked at the time of a crisis in European leadership, so the question for him is whether the British presidency and the new budget even begin to measure up to those challenges.
	We warmly welcome the accession talks with Turkey and Croatia. We welcome what the Prime Minister said about Macedonia and the EU partnership with Africa, but has not progress elsewhere been desperately slow?
	On the budget, does the Prime Minister remember having three clear objectives: first, to limit its size, when almost every country in Europe is taxing and borrowing too much; secondly, to ensure fundamental reform of the CAP; and, thirdly, to keep the British rebate unless such reform occurs? Is it not now clear that he failed in every single one?
	First, the Prime Minister said that he wanted the size of the budget to be set at 1 per cent. of Europe's income. Can he confirm that the budget that he has just agreed is higher than that, higher than the compromise that he tabled and will mean £25 billion in extra spending? The Prime Minister says that that is intended to pay for enlargement, so will he confirm that Ireland, which is richer per capita than Britain, is getting more per head than Lithuania, Slovakia and Poland?
	Secondly, the Prime Minister wanted to change the things that the budget was spent on. Is it not clear that he has failed to do that as well? Is it not the case that CAP spending will be higher next year, the year after that and in every year up to 2013? The Chancellor said that CAP reform was necessary to make poverty history. The Prime Minister told the House in June that he wanted to get rid of the CAP. Will he confirm that, four months later, his own Europe Minister said that the Government had not put forward any detailed proposals to reform the CAP? Is it not the case that the entire Government spent four years doing nothing about something that the Prime Minister thought was essential?
	Will the Prime Minister be clear about what he has secured on the CAP? It is a review and it takes place in 2008. Can he confirm that, in that year, the presidency will be held by France? Is he aware that the French Foreign Minister has said that Jacques Chirac has secured that there will be no reform to the common agricultural policy before 2014? Is that not the opposite of what the Prime Minister actually wanted? In other words, he has completely failed to deliver CAP reform.
	What about the Prime Minister's third objective: if all else fails, keep the rebate? All else did fail, and the Prime Minister's position was clear. He used to say the rebate was non-negotiable. He said at that Dispatch Box in June:
	"The UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away. Period."—[Official Report, 8 June 2005; Vol. 434, c. 1234.]
	The Chancellor said that it was non-negotiable and fully justified. Then the Prime Minister changed his mind. The rebate could be negotiated, he said, provided that there was fundamental reform of the CAP. So it was clear that the only circumstances in which the rebate would be given up was if there were a commensurate and equal giving up of farm subsidies.
	That is not an unreasonable position and, at that time, he knew all about the other considerations he mentioned today, including the importance of supporting enlargement. But what happened? The farm subsidies remain and £7 billion of the rebate has been negotiated away. If that was always the Government's plan, why was not any reduction in the rebate in the Chancellor's pre-Budget report? We are told that the Chancellor did not even know about the final deal. Normally, it is the Chancellor who does not tell the Prime Minister about what is in the Budget; this time the Prime Minister did not tell the Chancellor.
	Can the Prime Minister confirm that, by 2011, the UK will be losing £2 billion a year and that that will be the baseline from which we negotiate? Will he confirm that the amount he has given up from the rebate is almost double our entire overseas aid budget this year?
	In June, the Prime Minister told the House that no deal was better than a bad deal. He said:
	"Europe's credibility demands the right deal—not the usual cobbled-together compromise in the early hours of the morning."—[Official Report, 20 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 524.]
	Did he remember that when he was cobbling together this compromise in the early hours of the morning? Why did he give up £7 billion for next to nothing? Vitally, how is the Chancellor going to pay for it—more taxes, more borrowing or cuts in spending? Which is it?
	A good budget deal would have limited spending; it would have reformed the CAP and it would have helped change Europe's direction. Is it not the case that none of those things happened under the British presidency? Europe needed to be led in a new direction. Are we not simply heading in the same direction but paying a bigger bill?

Tony Blair: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his general welcome for what we have done. One can only imagine what would have happened had we failed to reach a budget deal this December in terms of our relationships with the central and eastern European countries who are our allies, and of course with other new Governments, not least the German Government.
	The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to what was said in June. I would repeat what I said in this House, if I may, when I reported from the Brussels Council:
	"I proposed that we have a fundamental review of the EU budget, reporting in time for us to be able—midway through the next financial period—to alter fundamentally the structure of the budget, dealing both with the rebate and the CAP."
	I went on to say:
	"In the meantime, of course, we would ensure that we paid our fair share of enlargement."—[Official Report, 20 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 524.]
	The position is very clear. The opportunity to get the fundamental reform will come through the review. Twelve other countries joined with France in saying that they do not wish to disturb the CAP deal that was done in 2002. Of course, had we not been able to conclude that deal in 2002, enlargement would not have happened, because that summit concerned enlargement in respect of future spending. It is worth pointing out to people who criticise the deal reached in 2002 that, without it, we would never have got those countries coming into the European Union in 2004.
	As the right hon. Gentleman said, there will, however, be a major battle when the review is published. As the President of the Commission made clear today, it will be a fundamental review of what the money is spent on and how it should be spent. It will also, of course, be about a proper and sensible way of deciding that according to wealth people should pay, and according to need they should receive. The one thing that is obvious is that the budget does indeed need fundamental change, but the whole point about getting this deal in December is that, without it, the new central and eastern European countries could not have planned ahead for the next budget period. That is why we had to have an immediate deal in December so that they could have the certainty of the money coming to them, and then, in the medium and longer term, the prospect of the mid-term review that would allow us fundamentally to change the structure of the budget.
	The right hon. Gentleman is right that there will be a huge battle between the reformers and the non-reformers. But who are our allies in the reform struggle? The very countries in central and eastern Europe that, if we had not done a deal, would have been completely alienated from this country. No one should be in any doubt about that. After our ding-dong, I simply say to the Leader of the Opposition that it is important for the Conservatives to think very carefully about their position of withdrawing from the EPP. That would be a disaster in terms of this country being able to procure a good deal in Europe.—[Interruption.] The one thing that is very obvious from today's exchanges is that Euroscepticism is alive and well in the Tory party.

Tony Blair: I thank my hon. Friend for what she said. It is obviously extremely important that we begin Turkey's accession negotiations.
	Three things will drive people towards reform through the Commission's review. First, it is absolutely clear that people want a budget that is more rationally directed towards what they need for the future, including research and development and innovation. Even though the CAP has come down in the last 20 years from something like 70 per cent. of the budget to 40 per cent., that still means that 40 per cent. of the budget is spent on 2 or, at most, 4 per cent. of the working population. Secondly, the World Trade Organisation negotiations will push people towards that. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly—and this is why it is important that we keep the rebate on all CAP spending and on all spending in the European member states—there is absolutely no way that we will be able to get that reformed and restructured budget unless everything is taken into account, and that was why it was important that the review specifically mentioned both the CAP and the rebate.

Tony Blair: I actually think that the opposite is true. Obviously, it is important that we do everything we can to secure progress in the Doha trade round and that requires action by the European Union, but also by the United States and Japan, as well as by Brazil, India and the other emerging economies. The review allows us to be in the position of saying that we are going to need fundamental reform in order to meet our trade obligations. The Doha round, even if it is fully successful, will not create immediate agricultural reform: it will set that reform out over a period of time. For example, export subsidies will be phased out by 2013. That helps us to get a better deal in the mid-term review for Europe as well as the individual countries.

[Relevant documents: the uncorrected minutes of evidence taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee on Tuesday 6 December, HC (2005–06) 751-i.]
	Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.——[Mr. Alan Campbell.]

Charles Clarke: I am delighted that we are in a position today, as promised, to hold a debate in Government time on the police restructuring being considered, and which will cover all parts of the country.
	I want to emphasise that the debate is wholly informed by the needs of modern policing and the need to build strong and secure communities. That is the start and end point of the process that we have set out and I shall give more detail during our discussions. Central to the approach is the issue of local support for the police and the consent and accountability of the local police, which have for centuries characterised policing in this country. I believe that our proposals strengthen rather than weaken those aspects.
	I begin with the rationale for change. Members on both sides of the House will recognise that the nature of crime is changing. It is the duty of Government to ensure that our police service is equipped to protect the public and business from serious criminality as well as to provide effective neighbourhood policing. Both are increasingly related to each other in our modern society and both need structure.
	That is why the issue is not simply about redrawing the boundaries on a map, but about fundamental change in our approach to what Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary termed protective services by which the inspectors mean such things as serious and organised crime, counter-terrorism and handling major incidents without detriment to local policing. Protecting the public requires the police and others to predict and prevent rather than merely to react to serious criminality. That requires different approaches to policing from the traditional methods and gives particular priority to intelligence, which is at the core of dealing with serious and organised crime.

John Redwood: Is the Home Secretary aware that the Thames Valley police authority told me today that it has no figures for the costs or benefits of a merger with Hampshire and the other option? The authority has no idea of the staff changes entailed—whether there will be staff losses or a requirement for more staff. Does not that show that the process is being rushed ridiculously? There can be no proper figures for consideration before 23 December, and asking the police to do that so rapidly takes them away from the local neighbourhood policing that we want.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Home Secretary said at the beginning of his speech that the process would be undertaken only with the consent of police forces. Paul West of the West Mercia police authority categorically told the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), that he was against the measures, so will the Secretary of State take that view on board?

Peter Luff: Why have the Government not given more consideration to the federation of forces option? May I draw the Home Secretary's attention to paragraph 1.11 of "Closing the gap", which made it clear that
	"some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively large forces (5,000+ staff) received surprisingly low scores"?
	He has not made the case for strategic forces.

Julian Brazier: In Kent, we have a force that is near the top of the league by most of the Government's measures. It handles a number of strategic assets including the channel tunnel and the port of Dover. Given that Kent meets the Government's criterion on total manning, both uniformed officers and civilians, can we have an assurance that the wishes as expressed by its police authority and its county council to keep Kent as a police force will be upheld?

Gerald Howarth: The Home Secretary says that he will listen to all points of view and that he wants to consider everything that has been put on the table, but he has set the deadline of Friday for police forces to come up with proposals. Furthermore, those forces that bend to his will are to be given a cash handout. If that is not a bribe, what the hell else is? In Hampshire, like the position of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), we have a splendid police authority which by 2007 will meet all the Home Secretary's strategic objectives. The county has a strong military presence where it needs special policing. If the right hon. Gentleman is really interested in listening to what is said throughout the country, he should extend the deadline well into the new year so that all of us in this place can discuss these matters properly.

Owen Paterson: Is the Home Secretary aware of the serious doubts about the statistics behind "Closing the Gap"? Has he read the opinion of the professor of statistics at the university of Warwick which was published today? He said:
	"The quality of statistical information gathered for the HMIC report . . . is questionable . . . The statistical treatment of the data collected is largely unjustified and appears open to criticism . . . The graphical presentation of the data is poor and trend lines could be misleading; the use of computer-produced statistical elaborations is unjustified . . . there has been minimum professional statistical science input".
	He concludes:
	"The conclusions drawn in respect of the 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignore the variability of protective services performance at each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4,000 level. In short, there will be an unknown"—

Charles Clarke: I am sure that the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) will make his points when he makes his speech in the debate. The short answer is no I have not seen that report today—I will study it, of course—but I make the point again that it is very clear that the evidence is absolutely straightforward. That is why the HMIC has reached its view that strategic forces are the way to deal with such issues.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Once again, could the House please settle down? It is in the gift of the Home Secretary to decide whether or not to give way. At the moment, he has said that he wishes to make some progress.

Charles Clarke: Both issues will be addressed in the context of the proposals that will come to me by the end of this year; both issues will be part of the continued discussion with forces, authorities and chief constables in that period; and, on both issues, I can give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance that his concerns will be given full account as we get to the position that we need to get to.

Patrick Cormack: Could the Home Secretary please explain to the House why he is proceeding at such speed? This is the biggest shake-up in the police force for half a century and he ought to want to take the people of the counties of England and Wales with him. If he devoted six months, which is not a long time, to this process, he could probably have what he wants. However, he is driving fast and furiously without any regard to local concerns and local people. Can we not have an extension of this ridiculously tight timetable?

David Davis: I will give way in a moment.
	That is the core of the matter. We believe that this is all happening too fast. It is happening without serious thought about the consequences and it is being driven by the wrong motives. Rather than taking their time, the Government are trying to force the changes through almost without proper debate. Rather than being driven by operational effectiveness, the changes are being driven by a blind belief in centralisation that defies the facts. Rather than focusing on the needs of the local people, they are being driven by an agenda of regionalisation that the Government continue to pursue against the will of the people. We welcome today's debate, but the Home Secretary has a long way to go before he proves the case for the changes that he is advocating.

Robert Key: When it comes to operational policing, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that this debate is being held as though only one police force operates in this country—the home police forces of the counties? It does not. Eight different police forces operate in my constituency at any one time, including the British Transport police and a host of others, most significantly the Minister of Defence police, and we cannot possibly sensibly consider police reform unless we consider the interface of all police forces. In garrison towns around my constituency there is an everyday working relationship between such forces, as there is in Colchester—the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is not here but I know that he would agree—and in Aldershot, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), and we must take that into account if we are to have sensible operational results.

Philip Davies: I am grateful—[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order.

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right, and he is right to point out that I am right. The point is simple. Some of the proposed new forces are simply too huge to be as effective as those whom they would replace.

David Davis: My hon. Friend makes the point exactly. If this reform is not driven by a regional agenda, why would the Hampshire police authority be forbidden from amalgamating with neighbouring Dorset or Wiltshire forces? The answer is that they would then cross arbitrary Government office boundaries. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) mentioned the Warwickshire police force, which is the smallest force in the country outside the City of London's. As it said in an early response to the report:
	"The Home Secretary has made it clear that the restructuring of forces has to take place within existing regional boundaries".
	If it is so important that we create larger strategic forces to fight terrorism and organised crime, why should we let regional boundaries dictate how those forces are formed? Are criminals going mysteriously to respect regional boundaries? If this reform is truly about operational effectiveness, it should be solely about doing what is most effective—not about fitting the Government's discredited, one-size-fits-all prejudices and preconceptions. The Government's plans for regional government were defeated soundly in a referendum of the people; it is time that they accepted that fact, rather than trying to implement them through the back door.

David Davis: It is correct that the manifesto said that we would have an elected police commissioner, and there is nothing wrong with that. There may be a case—[Interruption.] Is the right Home Secretary having difficulty hearing? The answer to his question was yes.
	We accept that there may be a case for amalgamation in some parts of the country; our concern is that the Government are forcing it on police forces that do not want or need it. As one chief constable said:
	"There's not been enough critical examination of the report. Restructuring may be exactly what two or three forces in one part of the country need and may make totally sound sense. But it does not follow that it needs to work like that in every part of the country".
	The speed with which this restructuring is being done is one of our greatest concerns. As that same chief constable outlined:
	"This is going to be the most profound change since the modern police service was created in 1829. Maybe it is not necessary to have a two-year royal commission now, but a debate—not even much of a debate—that is based upon a report which took three months to write and which we have really only been given a month to respond to, is just too hasty".
	The last time such a change was proposed, a royal commission was indeed established. As was pointed out in an earlier intervention, it was established in 1960 and reported in 1962, and its recommendations were put in place between 1964 and 1965. This time, the report was called for in June and published in September, and it will be implemented—if the Government get their way—as early as next year. As the Labour chairman—another Labour chairman—of the Cheshire police authority, Mr. Peter Nurse, told the Home Secretary,
	"Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities and for us to fully appraise what is the best structure for policing in this area that not only effectively tackles those serious criminals in our midst but also protects our neighbourhood."
	That is a comment from a Labour chairman of a police authority.
	The speed leaves many questions unresolved. One of the most important of those is cost.

David Davis: The Home Secretary was asked that question in an intervention, but he dismissed two important assessments of the issue as guesswork. I shall now address it in some detail. The O'Connor report, on which the Home Secretary bases his argument, is 113 pages long, of which just one and a half pages cover how the merged forces will deliver savings. A figure of £70 million is asserted, but is completely unsubstantiated. The report says that the change "could save" some £70 million in the long run, but equally it might not. There is every chance that costs will go up, not down, especially information technology costs in which both the Home Office and the police do not have a brilliant track record.
	If nothing else, all experience shows that the process of amalgamation will be a ferociously disruptive and distracting exercise, for probably several years, during which time neither the terrorists nor the criminals will take a rest. The draft calculations in the report are far from convincing. So is the evidence from history.
	I am sure that many hon. Members will remember what happened on a previous occasion when a Labour Government amalgamated two institutions to try to drive up standards and cost-effectiveness. They took one poorly run car company and one very successful international lorry company, put them into one and created a disaster called British Leyland. The history of amalgamations does not inspire confidence. Rather than raising the average of all, they often pull successful institutions down. Even if the projected operational and cost improvements can be achieved, it is clear that they could also be achieved through the simpler federated structure, with forces providing mutual support and co-operation. That would have the added benefit of avoiding heavy up-front costs.

Henry Bellingham: My right hon. Friend will be aware that after the Tony Martin case there were several cross-border policing issues. The Norfolk constabulary entered into a federation with Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, which has achieved a great deal. It meets many of the aspirations in the inspectorate's report. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Home Secretary has not answered the question that was put to him about federation and that that is surprising, given that he is a Norfolk MP?

David Davis: My hon. Friend is right. Dorset provides us with a great number of examples, in terms of who the force would prefer to amalgamate with, as a highly efficient and relatively small force. That one county manages to defy almost every precept that the Home Secretary puts up.
	The O'Connor report admits that reorganisation is "bound" to entail up-front costs. It states that they "cannot be avoided". In view of that warning, did not it occur to the Government that it might be a good idea to find out what the costs might be before they demanded that amalgamation proceed? That job has been left to police authorities. The estimates are as wide ranging as they are disturbing. Figures of £25 million or £30 million have been suggested simply to amalgamate the IT systems of two neighbouring forces. The hon. Member for Stockton, North has been vocal about that. His local force in Cleveland was told that it would have to merge with Durham and Northumbria. The authority thinks that it would have to borrow £50 million to pay for that. Servicing the loan will cost £5 million a year.
	Some forces will have to borrow even more. I have before me a memo from the Leicestershire police authority, which puts the cost of amalgamation to create an east midlands regional force at more than £100 million, with ongoing costs—not ongoing savings—of between £30 million and £52 million.

Julian Lewis: In supporting what my right hon. Friend said earlier, may I point out that it has been reported today that the chairman of the Hampshire police authority—I apologise in advance for using these words again, Madam Deputy Speaker—has stated:
	"I am absolutely disgusted with the Home Secretary for his blatant attempt to bribe police authorities into accepting voluntary mergers . . . This surely illustrates how police authorities across the country have got him running scared by standing together in protest against reforming the structure of policing in England and Wales"?
	Will my right hon. Friend take this opportunity to encourage police forces throughout the country not to be divided one against the other due to the offer of money if they agree to something with which they disagree in an impossibly short time scale?

Paddy Tipping: The right hon. Gentleman has a distinguished record as a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. Given that there are 43 different police authorities and forces, is he really telling the House that there is no scope for efficiency savings? Surely we should examine such efficiency savings carefully and look at bigger organisations. Yes, there will up-front costs due to reorganisation, but he must accept that such a way forward could reduce costs in the long term.

Peter Bottomley: My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) will be able to talk about the reaction of the Sussex police authority and will probably confirm that not a single person has written to any Sussex MP to say that they are in favour of the changes. Does my right hon. Friend anticipate that if the Audit Commission or the National Audit Office examined the spending that the Home Secretary contemplates and considered what would happen if it were all spent on improving the strategic ability of our police forces, they would find that we would get far better value for money than we would by spending most of the money on changing uniforms and IT systems earlier than would naturally happen?

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting but false point. Does he disagree with the proposition that we should take a sensible amount of time—six months or so—to cost the proposals, work out their real consequences and consult the people involved to ensure that we get a decent and stable outcome?

John Denham: The Committee has certainly not advocated that since I have been a member of it. I have no expertise in the area, but I will hazard a guess that, even if Portugal has made progress on drugs crime by one means or another, the criminals concerned are still involved in organised crime. We need a policing pattern that deals with the way in which crime is organised.
	The second issue that Ministers should address as quickly as possible is council tax and local government funding. That issue is not fatal to our position now, but in the new year, the prospects for making progress will be far better if it is possible for each of us to explain to our constituents how reorganisation will affect local funding. If it appears on paper as though our constituents will be picking up the bill for other forces, it will be important to be able to say that, in fact, that will not be case.

Mark Oaten: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One difficulty with the Government's proposal, and with the Opposition's proposal for directly elected police commissioners, is that we have not tackled the issue of real local accountability. I shall have more to say about that.
	Consultation has been badly handled. There is a need for a wide-ranging debate. Given the way in which the Government have proceeded at such a fast rate, they have lost much good will among those who wanted a sensible debate on the issue. They have also angered the associations that work in policing. The Association of Police Authorities is right to feel aggrieved that the process has been boiled down to about three months. It rightly points out that, when the previous restructuring took place in 1959, the bedding-down period was much longer. It was reasonably successful. A rushed merger and a rushed process will create bad will and probably result in a structure that will not work.
	The chairman of the Hampshire police federation has described the process as having been rushed through the Home Office at an "almost obscene pace". I believe that he is right. The chairman of the Cheshire police authority said to the Home Secretary that
	"Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities."
	Those comments were echoed by the shadow Home Secretary and many others who are involved in police matters.
	The next area of concern is the costs involved. Different figures are being put around. My office has spoken to a number of police authorities. First, there is Lincolnshire. The proposed merger for the East Midlands force would amalgamate Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. It is estimated that that would cost £100 million. The director of finance says that, even if the change were made, which could result in some efficiency changes over a long period, there could be a net recurring debt cost of £30 million a year.

John Denham: Would the hon. Gentleman apply that logic to the Metropolitan Police Service, which is far larger than any of the police forces that are going to be introduced?

Mark Oaten: The hon. Lady is correct and I shall clarify the model that we are suggesting. First, we should have a national border force for our borders which, we accept, are complex and difficult to police. It is critical to do so at a time when guns, knives and the drugs problem are threatening the country. Such a force would manage sea borders and our ports. Secondly, we would expand SOCA to deal with the complex crimes that I set out. Finally, we should keep our forces as they are, with strengthened basic command units, so that they can deal with day-to-day local policing. That is a sensible policing model for this country.

John Denham: Can the hon. Gentleman expand his argument? SOCA does not have huge numbers of people working for it. It is dependent on the existing capacity at force level. Is he suggesting that there would be a massive transfer of perhaps tens of thousands of officers from police forces to SOCA? If not, his solution does not solve the problem of needing people in each police force who are capable of delivering the response to organised crime.

Albert Owen: I want to make a little progress if I can, because I want to add the very important Welsh dimension to the debate.
	The Home Secretary said in his opening remarks that he was not moving towards a national police force, but in Welsh terms that is exactly what he is doing. I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee made a very important point about the crime trend in Wales, which is east-west. Indeed, the geography and the transport systems in many ways lead east to west, which is the way in which crime takes place. I shall return to that point a little later.
	An all-Wales force will be a Cardiff-centric force. In many ways, resources will be taken to Cardiff from the areas on the periphery that I represent and, indeed, from the whole north Wales region. We have experienced that with devolution. I am very much a pro-devolutionist, but most of the powers have been transferred from London to Cardiff. When we have strategic forces, the resources will cover the Cardiff area. In fairness to the Welsh Assembly Government, they are talking about moving regional offices, but there is no talk about the fire and other emergency services following that pattern.
	I feel strongly about a couple of other issues, including the cost implications for Wales. North Wales police force has invested using its council tax precept and increased its numbers over and above the Home Office allocation. We north Wales MPs have supported that in many ways, and we have seen the results. The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, who is sitting on the Front Bench, is aware of the work that North Wales police have done, which was reflected in the HMIC baseline report that came out in October this year. There have been excellent results, with excellent resources. What worries the police authority in North Wales and, indeed, many councillors, MPs and Assembly Members is that all that may be lost. If we have an equalisation in council tax, those in the south will cry out that their precept will increase. On the other side of the coin, many of the resources that have been invested by north Wales council tax payers will go down south. That is a big issue for people in north Wales.
	Another issue is jobs. The Home Secretary said that there will be economic savings, but I guarantee hon. Members that, in the Welsh dimension, jobs will be lost from the north to the south. There is no need for that to happen. I have heard no one at HMIC come up with a solution that would allow strategic forces to be effective in places such as north Wales and others on the periphery that do not have the necessary critical mass. I am a bit concerned about those issues.
	We have an added problem in Wales in that the Welsh Assembly Government contribute an awful lot of their money to community policing issues in work that is coterminous with that of local authorities. The Minister is aware that I have been concerned about that in the past. I should like her to make it clear to the House today that the Home Office does not envisage the proposals as the thin end of the wedge in devolving police issues to Wales. It is very important to retain cross-border links with English authorities—particularly, in respect of the North Wales force, with Cheshire, but not just that authority. My colleagues from the south have the same concerns about the links with Bristol and Somerset. Those are big issues for us.
	Historically, crime has moved east-west. North Wales police have taken down motor vehicle registrations because of the historic east-west links, and that project works. What would happen to such hugely successful projects, which North Wales police have piloted, if we were to move to an all-Wales force?
	On another issue that relates to cost, the North Wales police authority has estimated—these are the only figures that we have, because the Home Office has given us none—that to meet the level 2 policing requirement in the HMIC report would cost about £3 million for the North Wales force. The Association of Police Authorities in Wales estimates that the Welsh dimension of restructuring would cost between £47 million and £57 million. I believe that that money would be better spent on assisting the smaller forces to meet the level 2 requirement that the HMIC report asks them to meet. Of course, some small forces, such as the North Wales force, which covers the port of Holyhead in my constituency, are dealing with terrorism issues, and Welsh ports have done so for many years, given the IRA threat in Ireland.

Albert Owen: That is the point I made earlier. We have invested additional resources into local policing and we are concerned that we will lose them in an all-Wales dimension if decision making takes place further south.

James Paice: I am grateful to be called relatively early in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Inevitably, like many other hon. Members, I want to refer to my own force, Cambridgeshire, but before doing so I want to use the knowledge and experience that I gained in the role of shadow police spokesman, which I held for some three years, during which time I met many chief officers, police authority representatives and ordinary police officers throughout the country, as well as—I referred to this earlier—having experienced the awful tragedy in Soham in my constituency, a high profile murder case, with all its implications for inter-force co-operation.
	I was staggered to hear not only the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden) but the Select Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), castigate my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary for apparently resisting change. Frankly, that is nonsense, because he is rightly proposing directly elected police commissioners. To say that he is resisting change while at the same time he is proposing directly elected police commissioners, I find somewhat odd. But the Home Secretary is right; there are problems to be resolved. The present form of policing in this country leaves a lot to be desired. Policing is far from perfect.
	The "Closing the Gap" report, about which we have heard a lot today, identified where in the protective services there are grave shortcomings across a vast proportion of the police forces. I in no way dissent from the fact that there is a problem. What I dissent from is the Government's proposed solution to that problem. But there are also other problems that the report did not address. There are problems concerning the police themselves. I fear that there are now too many of what I call technocrats in the police force—people who are not necessarily good managers, but who have read the book and absorbed the gospel about how to solve crime without actually having gone out and done it. They are not very good at managing people and policing is largely about personal skills, both liaising with the public and with all the many other people with whom they have to deal. There is a perception in parts of the country, certainly in my constituency, of an unwillingness among the police sometimes to get out of their office or car. Those perceptions will not be resolved or improved by even more remote services, which the proposals suggest.
	I also accept, as the Home Secretary suggested, that there is a need to do more to combat high level and organised crime. But as the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) said, that was the purpose of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which Conservatives and Liberal Democrats supported. It is the building block for a much more comprehensive attack on such crime. There is no reason why there could not be local branches or squads of SOCA in every force area, precisely to address local issues and form local links. But the vast majority of my constituents—and I believe the same is true of everybody else's constituents—are bothered not by high level and organised crime, but by local crime such as street crime, car crime, vandalism, burglary and so on. Therefore, the proposed changes have to be examined against their effect on that sort of crime—the 95-odd per cent. of crime that affects ordinary people. I do not believe that the changes will help. Policing will become more distant and there will be a less accountable police force.
	The importance of neighbourhood policing cannot be over-emphasised. It is not just about reassurance. In my time I have been very critical of the word "reassurance". Reassurance is a result of effective policing; it should not be the objective. Neighbourhood policing is about local intelligence. The Home Secretary referred to the greater importance of intelligence-led policing. Yes, but so much of that intelligence arises from police officers on the ground, on the streets, in our villages, knowing who is a stranger in the area, picking up what is going on and being part of the community. That is real neighbourhood policing, and it is about low level local intelligence. But so often that can lead to much higher level intelligence into the field of serious and organised crime.
	As I said earlier, as with the Soham tragedy, mutual aid is also important for small forces that cannot perhaps, as currently structured, do everything as effectively as a larger one. The Soham case demonstrated that mutual aid does work—but there is plenty of room for improvement. That would be a better way, with an enhanced role for the Association of Chief Police Officers in issuing codes of practice about how it can work, to create a much clearer understanding. That is the basis for greater cross-border co-operation.
	On the issue of effective use of resources, not many people would say that spending £500 million on these proposals is the best use of resources. I suspect that if the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, who has left the Chamber, had been asked by the Home Secretary how he, as a former Minister with responsibility for police, would spend £500 million to enhance our policing, restructuring would not have been his first suggestion. I suspect that not many other Members would have suggested that.
	I suspect that the economy of scale envisaged by the proposal will not arise. Of course smaller forces are not able to have specialist units—reference was made to firearms and quick-response units earlier—but there is no reason why adjoining forces should not share a unit and the costs of it. All this restructuring is not necessary to address a relatively minor, albeit important, understanding. Again, ACPO could have a role in producing draft memos of understanding about how such joint squads could be operated. I see all that as being done within the police family, without the Home Secretary coming from on high and getting heavy.
	Similarly, in the case of central services such as human resources and all the other administrative-type services, there is no reason why one cannot have joint provision, with one force contracting its services out to others. That sort of thing could happen if we had a more proactive ACPO, and fewer prima donnas in the police force who want to do it all in-house, which is part of the problem. Again, that could be done without the Home Secretary stepping in.
	As for Cambridgeshire, I cannot say like many hon. Members that mine is one of the best police forces and that I want to keep it as it is, because I readily admit that it comes close to the bottom of the league table in many aspects. Those figures are out-of-date, however, and we believe that the force's performance over the past year or so is improving, partly as a result of the appointment of our former deputy chief constable, Julie Spence, who, I am delighted to say, was appointed last week as chief constable. She has brought a breath of fresh air to the force.
	My constituents want to see their local police officers on the street. They know full well about the problems of cross-border policing—we have problems with Travellers in Cambridgeshire and adjoining counties, and police forces must work together because the crime linked to that mobile community often goes across county boundaries. The disruption and disorganisation that is being proposed, however, is not required.
	I have a rule that I call Paice's law, whereby when one joins all sorts of different organisations, one usually ends up with a central administrative system that is greater than the sum of the parts of its previous components. I have seen that on many occasions during my time in the House, and I believe that the same would happen with this proposal.
	It is terribly important that our policing is with public consent. Over the past few years, there has been increasing concern that we are getting policing of the public rather than policing with the public. Policing with the public is critical, and these proposals will make the situation worse.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: In a democratic system, policing will always be a delicate task. The essential art is to persuade the general public that what is happening is in their best interests, and to persuade them that the amounts of money that the police force costs are more than justified. When the Government decide, for whatever reason, that they will change that massive and important service, it is essential that the reason and the basis for that should be clear. My difficulty is that I believe that the Government's suggestions, first, for a truncated timetable, and secondly, for a number of imposed decisions, write parameters for what is a very important change without taking account of the need for public support.
	Most of my constituents, who support the police 100 per cent., hope that they will have very little to do with them. They hope that they will never have to call a policeman, that they will not have their homes burgled, and that they will not be assaulted. Essentially, however, they want to know that those services are there if they are required. The Government, it seems to me, have a special responsibility to spell out what sort of changes will be introduced and how they will improve the service before such a degree of change is carried forward. I was surprised, for example, that the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety had been to the City of London and said, apparently with some effusion, that its force was not only very good but one that she hoped that others would copy. Since the City of London has perhaps 1,000 officers, I found that interesting and slightly perplexing.
	For the small county forces, a number of arguments can be generally accepted. Other Cheshire Members will undoubtedly tell the House that we have such a superb force of such incredible intelligence and energy that it is capable of solving all the problems of policing in a rural and urban area. That is not my attitude. I believe that there is now a real perception gap between the householder and the police.
	In my constituency, no matter how often we talk about neighbourhood policing, someone who has a gang of young people on their doorstep tearing down fences and wrecking their gardens wants an immediate response. They do not want to wait two hours for a car that passes by at the end of the street. If a number of hazards are being posed by antisocial families and people are being assaulted, they do not want to ring their local police station and be transferred from one automatic voice to another before getting a response. They want someone who will be there when they are in difficulty.
	Will the changes make that easier or more complex? My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), it seems to me, made a watertight case about the difficulty of simply considering units in terms of numbers and geography. I am happy to accept that the normal flow of co-operation should be between north Wales and Cheshire. It would be a very brave Home Secretary, however, who suggested that Crewe should be the automatic centre for a police force consisting of north Wales and other areas in the north-west of England. However, I think that we will face that situation.
	I was delighted that the Home Secretary said plainly that he does not approve of a national police force, because that is the logic of the arguments that we have heard from the Government. If one cannot organise into small units, one puts them into regions, and if one cannot put them into regions, one puts them into bigger units. One does that not on the basis of what is the bulk of normal policing—dealing with assaults, car crime and ordinary difficulties on the streets—but because one is facing difficulties in several highly specialised fields. If that is so, let us debate the implications of that in the House, and let it be clearly spelt out. So far, that has not been the case.
	There is far more in these proposals. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) spoke about the British Transport police. Why have they been included in proposals yet again? They have been subject to five reviews in five years, which, even for central Government, is probably slightly otiose. Since 70 to 80 per cent. of the work of the British Transport police is precisely what is called level 1 crime, one must have a very good argument before suggesting that they should be absorbed by the Metropolitan police. The British Transport police form a specialised unit. Its officers must have special training before being allowed on to the railway system, and they are clearly committed to a particular type of policing. If it is possible that in the future a member of the British Transport police will find that those brilliant Virgin trains are crossing the border into Scotland, but the British Transport police can do nothing about it because they are attached to the Metropolitan police, I may not be the only one to foresee difficulties. That, however, is the sort of proposition that we are hearing tonight.
	I want to make it very clear that I am totally opposed to the absorption by the Metropolitan police of a specialised police force like the British Transport police. I do not care what anyone says; in a very short time, the specialised force would cease to have an individual existence. It would so rapidly be used for other jobs and become involved in other functions that it would lose its specialised knowledge. Believe me, railways are extremely dangerous places, and that does not apply just when there are explosions. It applies to normal, day-to-day dealings with passengers and services. Railways are places in which people should not blunder about on the assumption that being part of the Metropolitan police confers God-given responsibility. That is not an acceptable point of view.
	Let me express one opinion very strongly. I am disturbed that in the rush to come up with a solution, the House is being stampeded into arguing a fragmented case relating to a number of small areas. In defending the west midlands or debating whether north Wales should logically be involved with Cheshire, we are missing the point of the argument. The Government have a long time in which to decide what they want to do. They should give us a much more detailed and much more serious set of reasons for their wish to pursue the changes.
	If the Government seriously imagine that the whole problem can be solved on a formulaic basis, let me say this to them. It does not matter which part of the United Kingdom we are discussing. I represented Exeter once. Exeter regarded Bristol as the outer darkness then, and the Cornish regarded the rest of the peninsula as entirely unacceptable. If we simply ordain that so many thousand members of a force should go somewhere irrespective of the wishes of local people, we shall soon discover something very obvious. Neighbourhood policing is just that: it means policemen and policewomen who can be seen, and who respond to letters.
	The Secretary of State did something that I cannot do. He persuaded my chief constable to write a letter to me, and to send three e-mails. They were not very effective, because I did not do what he wanted, but the Secretary of State persuaded him to write to me. I could not persuade him to write to me answering questions about my own population.
	Do I care about what is being proposed? Yes, I do. Do I think that it will work? I have grave doubts. Do I wonder why the Home Office is pushing this through? I am astounded, but perhaps the answer lies in the Minister of State's views on the City of London police: as long as we all have fraud departments, we shall be able to cope with the future.

Crispin Blunt: My hon. Friend is right. Given the detail, time is needed for all involved in the debate to establish whether the Government's case for restructuring has been made.
	It is the speed with which the Government have sought to impose the most dramatic reform of police structures for over 40 years that concerns us all. When police forces are to be driven into marriages that they do not want, we can be pretty certain that they will have plenty of time to repent at leisure. Others have quoted much less complimentary observations by members of the Association of Police Authorities than I intend to quote, about the Government's use of incentives to persuade police forces to sign up to their proposals. My principal concern relates to the destruction of the county-wide forces, which will take control of the police from identifiable and accountable bodies and place it in the hands of amorphous regions with which my constituents in particular do not identify.
	Although today's debate focuses on the regionalisation of county constabularies, the reforms seem to make sense only as an element of the Government's incessant desire to regionalise the public services on which our constituents rely. The fire control room in Reigate is about to be moved to Fareham in Hampshire, and according to information from our ambulance service that reached my in-tray today, we should prepare for the regionalisation of the service. In each case, accountability is being taken from elected county councillors who speak up for the people of Surrey and dispersed over ever larger and more cumbersome regions.
	We in Surrey are currently missing an opportunity to bring health structures into line with county structures such as social services as health services are reorganised yet again. Strangely enough, we seem to be returning to the regional health authorities that we had in 1997. Every time a structure takes root, the Government want to rip it out and replant it. Four or five years later, they revert to the original structure. That costs an enormous amount and makes the organisations involved much less accountable. Even we, who are trying to address the issues in a full-time professional manner, have great difficulty in understanding who does what.
	I am also worried about the cost of the restructuring, to which others have referred. In Surrey, it is estimated at some £28 million. I am not remotely surprised that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) do not want the Kent force to merge with Surrey. As may be pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), neither the Sussex nor the Kent force will want to merge with Surrey on financial grounds alone. Surrey is in a desperate financial position. In 1997, it was one of the best-funded forces in the country, with a crime prevention record second only to that of Gwent. Its reward for being so successful in crime prevention has been to see its budget reduced, reduced and reduced.

Crispin Blunt: My hon. Friend is precisely on the mark. It is important to establish what underlies all these different proposals to reform different parts of public services: they are all relentlessly driving towards the regional level. It is ironic that the Home Secretary is now promising extra funding to forces that agree to the mergers early, while refusing to guarantee funding to the county forces that understandably remain wary of these reforms.
	I recall that, when the Conservative Government promised extra funding to schools that were keen to apply for grant-maintained status, the Labour party accused us of bribing schools to follow our agenda, yet the Home Secretary is content to use the threat of withholding funding to bully county forces into mergers about which they have grave reservations. The only difference between then and now is that schools were then only too enthusiastic to take control of their own affairs and secure grant-maintained status. If Conservative policy had stayed in place, every school would have had control of itself through grant-maintained status. That seems rather similar to what is in the recent White Paper, but it has taken a long time to get there.
	While I believe that the restructuring of police forces along regional lines is foolhardy in terms of financing and operational effectiveness, my greatest concern remains the impact on accountability and recognition of the police force for the people it serves. The reform will affect the relationship between my constituents and their local police. We bemoan the fact that the police are seldom face to face with the public. Over the past 30 years, the personal relationship between the police and the people they serve has been undermined. There is absolutely no way that the proposals will help to overcome that problem.
	There are arguments in favour of assuming responsibilities at the national level, and the example of soccer was mentioned earlier. There are also arguments for having smaller borough units with specific local duties: to their credit, the Government are making progress on that. There is no argument, however, to justify vast regional forces that have no emotional or logical connection with the populace that they serve. A south-east regional force would not be responsive to the huge range of challenges faced in areas as different as Reigate or Redhill in my constituency, the outer suburbs of the capital, the ports of Sussex and Kent, our nation's two busiest airports or the vast swathe of rural areas in the south-east. Nor will my constituents recognise a regional force as one directly responsible to a body that they either elected or could identify with.
	We are entitled to conclude that another agenda beyond the mere restructuring of the police is behind the proposals. The Government are set on regionalising the United Kingdom, taking powers from historic counties and granting them to new regional assemblies. The happy failure of the people of the north-east to support a regional assembly, despite an acknowledged strong sense of regional identity there, does not seem to have deterred the Government at all.
	In Surrey, the Government are moving the police force, fire service, hospitals and ambulance services to a regional level away from county structures. If the Government's reforms remove the local education authorities, the county council will become a largely redundant body—and it is surely no coincidence that county councils are rarely in the hands of Labour administrations. The counties are being emasculated to make way for bodies even more beholden to central Government, with no thought for the traditional elected bodies of the old counties and the people who identify with them. The police restructuring is but a part of that agenda and the cost will not be substantial only in monetary terms, because it will make our police even more remote from the people that they serve.

Mark Todd: First, I appreciate that there are some powerful arguments in favour of building a critical mass in resources and applying them to serious crime and to counter terrorism. I am not unsympathetic to the Home Secretary's arguments in his opening speech or to the arguments of the O'Connor report. My concern has been partly about the process—arguments about the time frame within which we are having to consider such a complicated matter have already been aired—and partly about the narrowing of options too early in that process.
	The assumption has been made that full force amalgamation is the only acceptable way to proceed, but two options, partly aired in the debate, have been discounted. One is to form more specialist forces to deal with particular activities, as in the case of the transport police, and the other is the sharing of resources co-operatively across different parts of the country to achieve common objectives. Those options were posited as possibilities in the O'Connor report, but were discounted by the Home Office in the rather too hasty process of reaching a conclusion.
	The concept of co-operation has been explored in limited fashion in the east midlands. We have a helicopter service that is shared perfectly happily between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and it is a successful and efficient service. My concern—to some extent, I am arguing against my own position—is the difficulty of pushing police forces that constantly seek to run their own empires and agendas into that logical step.
	I am perfectly clear—I agree with the Home Secretary on this—that to have back office operations run separately in 43 different police forces is simply crazy and mistaken. Having purchasing functions running in the 43 forces is similarly mad—not just on account of the waste of resources, but in respect of the technologies that the police require, running from the rudimentary ones such as police cars through to individual information systems. It is true that some forces, including the Derbyshire force, have made powerful reputations for scientific advance that should certainly be shared across a number of forces. It is crazy to have just one beacon of expertise.

Mark Todd: I would like to return to that point when I debate costs and savings later in my speech.
	I am also concerned about the narrowing of options relating to regionalism. Until I heard the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) refer to the extraordinarily unique nature of Staffordshire crime, I was tempted to explore the opportunity of co-operation between the Staffordshire and Derbyshire forces. That would have put together two relatively powerful forces to the benefit of people in that part of the country, but he claimed that Staffordshire criminals are unique and that we could not possibly proceed on that basis, so I must defer to the Home Office's guidance on this issue. However, given that I represent a constituency that is right on the border of a region, it is perhaps natural for me to take the view that the drawing of such a hard and narrow dividing line does not at all reflect criminal patterns.
	I have two worries about the options being pursued: the possible loss of local focus, intelligence and awareness in addressing lower-level criminality; and the likely redirection of resources away from well-policed, lower-level crime areas such as mine, toward areas within the new regions where policing has been ineffective. It might be possible to address those two concerns, which is why I have taken a qualified position in my conversations with Home Office Ministers. I do not start from a position of innate support for these proposals, but I could be persuaded to support them if it can be demonstrated that there are ways of dealing with my concerns.
	First, is it possible to strengthen basic command unit representational frameworks? For example—I have used this example in meetings—we in South Derbyshire have an extremely successful crime and disorder partnership. I recognise that that is not repeated in all parts of the country, but it provides a relationship model in my area that the police could work comfortably with in strengthening operational activities. I want some flexibility. Instead of simply opting for a local authority model involving a police committee, for example, let us look at local examples that work and that work with the existing grain.
	I would not want to turn such a partnership into a rigid framework. The strength of our partnership has been the mutually respectful voluntary framework within which it has worked. Local people in South Derbyshire tend to work practically together to solve problems without doing a lot of grandstanding and point scoring among themselves. That strength would be lost if someone threw the pot of money into the equation and said, "You're going to have to carve up exactly how this is to be dealt with in a very practical way", or if such people had too much direct operational control over policing in their area. What we have works very well and we should work with the existing grain.

Mark Todd: Indeed. It happens to be based in Ripley, but my hon. Friend makes a powerful point. South Derbyshire is at the bottom end of a long county, and the people who live there tend to think that most places are a long way away, so locating the headquarters some distance away is not one of my major concerns. People will think that it is a long way away wherever it is located, and as my hon. Friend says, many people do not know where it is located now.
	I turn to my second point, which is the redistribution of resources. Here, I will be blunt. We heard earlier some brief interventions from Nottinghamshire Members and I well understand their desire to move ahead with the combining of forces in that area. However, they must understand that their desire and anxiety is matched by an anxiety on the part of those in better performing areas that such a combination may involve the redistribution of resources. That has also to be balanced by the recognition that Nottinghamshire has a higher expenditure on policing per head than does Derbyshire. I have heard the argument that we will get our hands on a larger pot and that that would be great, but the greater anxiety is that a lot of that pot will go toward solving problems in the Nottinghamshire area and away from better policed areas with relatively limited resources, such as mine.
	I turn to the process of transition. Such restructuring will be disruptive in all sorts of ways. In any merger, substantial career decisions have to be made that inevitably lead to distraction—there is no way round that. The cost of the east midlands option has been estimated at a little over £100 million and although that is a back-of-an-envelope calculation at this stage, the sum involved will certainly be large. The police authority has rightly said that it is very difficult to commend such an option without first knowing where the money will come from. If it comes from the normal expenditure of the newly created authority, that will inevitably mean cuts in other activities while the transition takes place. The authority also predicts an ongoing expenditure increase, simply to bring that part of the country up to the standards for protective services that the O'Connor report identifies as desirable. The question of how to distribute resources within the new authority is arguable; nevertheless, it is a fair question and it needs to be resolved now.
	I finish by pointing to the differences in policing function within my region. I am sorry, in a way, that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) is no longer in his place. He shares with me an interest in Traveller law policy and I have to say that that policy is not the same in Derbyshire as it is in Leicestershire, for example—a fact that is well exploited by the people of those communities. I would not wish to see a blanket, lowest common denominator approach applied to policing policy, simply because we were required to have a strategic focus for policy development. Local differences are valuable and have been fought for, in this particular case, extremely hard by those such as me, who have directly engaged with this issue. I do not want the hard-won ground to be lost.
	I want harder answers to the questions that I have raised and I look forward to the response to this debate.

Peter Luff: My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) earlier quoted from a report prepared for the West Mercia constabulary by Professor Lawrance of the university of Warwick. He states:
	"The conclusions drawn in respect of the 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignore the variability of protective services performance at each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4000 level. In short, there will be an unknown number of good and poor performers in reformed larger forces."
	The whole statistical basis of the "Closing the Gap" report is fundamentally flawed, and the 4,000 figure has no justification in empirical fact.

Paul Flynn: Before any reorganisation is authorised by the House, the case should be overwhelming. The last two Opposition speakers have made clear how weak the case is. The original report states the case for reorganisation in very tentative language and points out that some of the biggest police forces fall short in dealing with all levels of crime, whereas some of the smallest—including the Gwent, Dyfed-Powys and North Wales police forces—achieve remarkable results.
	It was once said that
	"we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
	That was said by Gaius Petronius in AD66, and it remains true today. That is the experience that most of us have had of reorganisations. I have been an elected member of authorities for 33 years and I have seen many reorganisations, all promising to produce marvellous results. The first reorganisation of local government that I endured was based on the notion that big is beautiful, the second on the notion that small is beautiful. All of them duplicated jobs, despite promising reductions and all manner of efficiencies of scale, whether large scale or small scale. None delivered the promised improvements and all plunged the authorities affected into period of upheaval.
	Probably the only groups of people who favour police reorganisation are the criminals, because they are likely to benefit, and some members of the police service, because they are ambitious and know that it is likely to produce many new and well paid jobs. In the year leading up to the reorganisation, the police will be able to say, "Of course our standards have dropped and we haven't arrested so many people or solved so many crimes, but that is because we are building up to reorganisation." Their excuse for the next two years will be, "We are in the middle of reorganisation." The worst period will come after that. Members of the National Association of Retired Police Officers have first-hand knowledge of what happened during the last reorganisation, which took place in 1965–66, and their evidence states that it took 10 years to get back to pre-reorganisation levels of efficiency. That is the key point. There is no case for changing. We have the tyranny of arithmetic determinism. Someone names a number—for example, 4,000—and everyone has to fit into this Procrustean bed of having a false 4,000.
	We have a splendid police force in Gwent. It is at the top of the league, not only for last year or the year before that but for a period of 20 years. It is institutionally sound as well as administratively efficient. It enjoys enormous support from the public. The national approval rate is 78 per cent. What other service enjoys public confidence on that scale? It seems that we shall throw it away in response to a report that was not part of the Labour party's manifesto. There is no reason why we should be bound to the report. There is no ideology behind it. There is no reason why we should be supporting the report on the basis of party loyalty, or for any other reason. We are entirely free to vote against the report because it was not part of our manifesto.
	There is an extraordinary political situation in the House. There is a Liberal Democrat Green who wants to hug all the asylum seekers and who is splendidly politically correct. There will be great changes to the political structure in future. The last thing that we want is to have round our neck the albatross of a reorganisation that will be unpopular, with all the problems that will occur in future, which will be blamed on the reorganisation. We shall suffer that ignominy and blame in future elections.
	The report, as the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) said, makes a weak case. We are offered the window dressing that it solve the problem of terrorism. The same excuse was used for selling identity cards, but that was dropped. Identity cards will not solve the problem of terrorism. The other issue is drugs, to which a rational approach should be taken. The new leader of the Conservative party has a splendid, pragmatic view on drugs, which he demonstrated during his interrogation of witnesses who appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee when it was chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). The present Chairman of the Committee did not seem to reflect that view. I believe that if the Leader of the Opposition continues to pursue the brave policy that he advanced then and during his leadership campaign election we will, for the first time in 30 years, have an intelligent debate about drugs in the House.
	We will solve the problem of drugs not through a reorganisation of the police but through a set of new laws. I spent the last weekend in a country that is not regarded as one that is successful on drug policy—Italy. The Villa Mariani in Rome operates a drugs policy that would be approved by many progressive people in the House. It is one of harm reduction, of needle exchanges and of treating drug addicts not as criminals and throwing them into prisons where there are drugs—and there are drugs in every one of our prisons in this country. It is a humane and practical policy that is pursued in collaboration with the police.
	Portugal has, over a five-year period, reduced the number of people who have died from drugs by 50 per cent.—an extraordinary achievement. The Netherlands, Belgium and Australia have reduced the number of deaths from drugs by taking an effective, practical and humanitarian approach to the problem. The structure of our police is completely irrelevant to that.
	Criminals will, of course, welcome a restructuring. During the reorganisation the police's attention will be on where headquarters will be, on who will get what job and on who will be given what desk. Their attention will be distracted from the task of trying to catch criminals. They will be diverted by the black hole of reorganisation.
	We have heard about what happened in Wales; it is an extraordinary, marvellous story. Evidence was given on 27 October 2004 to the Welsh Affairs Committee. The four chief constables turned up to say that they did not want an all-Wales authority. One of them said—I had the pleasure of quoting it back to her—that she did not want to see a link between north Wales and south Wales. Exactly a year later, on 27 October 2005, she told us that she would like reorganisation on an all-Wales basis. We must not be too hard on the police, as ambition comes into play. Some very attractive jobs and career options will be created. It has been said that when Wales reorganises the chief constable will have a helicopter—the "super-copper with a chopper". However, benefits will not be delivered to the general public.
	As for costs, it is irresponsible to suggest that we should embark on such a programme when the police tax—it is more accurate to describe the council tax that way—will increase by up to 30 per cent. My area will be affected by equalisation between north Wales and Gwent, so our council tax or police tax will increase by an enormous amount—an increase of 13 per cent. next year is already being talked about. If we want more community police officers, it will increase by even more. We cannot be rushed into a decision by 23 December if there is no prospectus on costs at all. What on earth would the public make of that? The decision to reorganise forces has been rushed and has no rational basis. It will help only the criminals, and it will harm the structure of the police. It is reorganisation for reorganisation's sake, and we do not know whether big or small is beautiful. We know, however, that reorganisation, before it is introduced, must be based on a strong, powerful case. This is based on nothing.

Humfrey Malins: All Governments are, from time to time, guilty of the offence of hurrying to change or to legislate. This Government, I am afraid, are doing so too often. Pressures have been imposed on the people who have to respond. What chance is there of an inquiry by the Select Committee on Home Affairs into police restructuring and reorganisation? What discussions have taken place with bodies that operate on a county basis and which will be seriously affected, including the magistrates courts service, the Crown court service, the probation service and the Crown Prosecution Service? There has been no consultation with them whatsoever. The Home Secretary said that the time frames were challenging. Frankly, they are nothing short of a disgrace.
	I should like to say a word or two on behalf of Surrey, which is a small police force consisting of 1,959 officers. However, the great and the good deem it too small and "not fit for purpose". I invite them, however, to look at what Surrey has been able to achieve. Surrey police have made the county one of the safest in England, and they are consistently among the top five performers nationally. The latest results indicate that they have hit the top performance targets set for them by Surrey Police Authority in many different areas. They have cut robbery, vehicle crime and burglary. Surrey police are an excellent police force, and their success has been achieved despite Government help which, over the years, has decreased more and more. A succession of excellent chief constables—Sir Ian Blair, Denis O'Connor and the present chief constable, Bob Quick—and an excellent authority chairman, Liz Campbell, together with a dedicated police force in Surrey, have worked against a background in which, year after year, our grant has been cut. Surrey has one of the lowest grants per head of population in the country, and receives £88 a head compared with an average of £103 a head in the south-east.
	Surrey's difficulties will not be sorted out by an amalgamation with Sussex or anyone else, as they stem from the underlying funding instability of the past few years. So put that right and we could be on the road to solving Surrey's problems, by giving Surrey police increased flexibility in reconfiguring and modernising their work force, which they want to do. That, coupled with a fair financial settlement, would sort out Surrey's problems.
	I have talked to many in Surrey about possible amalgamations. Where do we go? Is Surrey keen to amalgamate with another force? In truth, its preferred option is to stand alone, without the need for a merger, by exploiting work force modernisation and by co-operating with neighbouring forces to share services and with some limited financial investment. That is a viable option for Surrey police force. If it must amalgamate, I suspect that its favoured option would be to do so with Sussex; but, in truth, I am not sure that Sussex wants to amalgamate with Surrey. So the real answer is to treat Surrey police fairly—give them a chance, and they will prosper—and the Home Secretary should never say that a force of 1,959 is too small to be effective.
	If I wanted to find the answer to two questions—what we think of our police forces, and what we want from—I do not think that I would go to a Whitehall mandarin; I would go and ask perhaps a victim of crime. What do the victims think? There is still huge respect for our police force. Many would say that we have the best police force in the world. Many would rightly say that our police have a magnificent record of responding to major disasters and terrorist attacks and of dealing with high-profile murders. On all the big things, there is tremendous respect for our police force in this country.
	Ask individuals about their localities and how happy they are with the policing that they get, however, and perhaps there would be a frown on their foreheads. They are not so sure that the service is what they want. Locally, individuals want the police to respond and react quickly when they are contacted. They want detection levels to go up. Above all, most people still want to see more police on the streets, and the truth is that, whatever the Government's plans and policies and whatever they have talked about over the past eight years, I think that there are fewer police on our streets, and people do not like it, for each of us is comforted and reassured by the presence of the police, by knowing them personally and by knowing that they get deeply involved in the community.
	If the police are deeply involved in the community, known to people, moving around, talking to people and learning about solving the minor crime—the graffiti, the assaults and the drunkenness—and if they take control of communities, not only do they get the intelligence to sort out low-level crime, but that way comes intelligence to sort out the very serious crime and to find out who is responsible for it. So one's contacts perhaps might fear that the amalgamations, the mergers and the whole principle that big is better is a flawed concept.
	Someone told me not long ago, "Everything in my life seems to be getting bigger and more remote. It's moving away from me. I don't feel that I have any real involvement." So my advice to the Government is very clear. They should avoid the steady march towards a regional police force system; it is the last thing that people want. They should not think that bigger means better; it does not. They should not think that centralisation is better than devolving powers to communities; it is not. They should understand that larger can mean more remote. They should also understand that, if they focus too much on the big issues, those at the bottom end of society will find that the issues that matter to them are ignored and left aside.
	So will it be in Surrey's interest to amalgamate? I doubt it somehow. If it amalgamates with Sussex, performance may drop, things will be more remote and the financial resources may be sucked down to Brighton, Hastings or Gatwick. People in my constituency, Woking, will feel less involved, and they will feel that the police service is less accountable. The Government should remember that people in our communities are feeling increasingly left out and detached, and the more that we create big things, the more that they will feel remote and left out of our society.

Ian Lucas: I have concerns about the proposals because I am extremely proud of the progress that the Government have made in improving policing in Wrexham. When I was elected in 2001, one of the most common issues in my constituency was antisocial behaviour and crime. I had difficulty in dealing with those issues and referring them to the police because I could not contact identifiable officers for geographical areas in the constituency and I was not sure to whom to refer constituents. I am pleased to say that, in the Wrexham and in the North Wales police area today, we have identifiable community beat officers in each council ward. In addition, we have community support officers and neighbourhood wardens. We would like to have more neighbourhood wardens, but unfortunately the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives on the local authority voted against that.
	The Government have a tremendous record on neighbourhood policing and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has personal experience and knowledge of policing in Wrexham. She came to Wrexham at a very difficult time and I am grateful for her support then. She has seen neighbourhood policing in its infancy and the way that it has developed since.
	My concerns are shared by my colleagues right across north Wales and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for already giving us a great deal of time. She has listened carefully to what we have had to say and she is aware of some of the arguments that have already been referred to in the debate so far. I will not discuss north Wales at length, because a number of colleagues have already raised the issue.
	I wish to consider specifically Denis O'Connor's report. I am a reformer and a great believer in police reform. Police reform has occurred substantively under this Government, but it has been opposed at many stages by the Opposition parties. I remember being in Committee when the introduction of community support officers was being discussed. That was opposed by the Opposition parties. I remember concerns being expressed about the extension of neighbourhood warden schemes, but I am very pleased that progress has been made.
	I welcome the assurances that have been given about the future of neighbourhood policing, but we must consider Denis O'Connor's report. I am not against the amalgamation of forces if it improves the level of policing that is afforded to my constituents. I am not against the amalgamation of forces if it improves the operational capacity of the Wrexham force and the North Wales force.
	I have considered closely the proposals in Denis O'Connor's report, but I have also considered closely the statement by Chief Constable Giffard in his letter of 9 November this year to the chief constable of North Wales. It set out the reasons for recommending an all-Wales force, and it is worth quoting them in full:
	"The option meets the HMIC criteria on size of force and demonstrates the potential capacity to provide protective services to national standards without adverse impact on police services at the neighbourhood level."
	There is no dispute that an all-Wales force would have more than 4,000 officers; that is not an issue. However, I have seen no real evidence to date that suggests that protective services across Wales would be improved by the creation of an all-Wales force. If that evidence exists, I would like to see it. If it exists, it should be put before the public so they can see the evidence that suggests that policing would be improved.
	In the Welsh context, it is extremely important to consider the geographical area that would be covered by the all-Wales force. Five hours is not an unusual journey time from Holyhead to Cardiff and, from Wrexham, it takes three hours to get to Cardiff and four hours to Swansea. It is a huge area.
	When I read Denis O'Connor's report, I was struck by the stress that he places on the maintenance of local links. For example, he states:
	"the overall goal should be the creation of organisations that are large enough to provide a full suite of sustainable services, yet still small enough to be able to relate to local communities."
	It is difficult to see how a national Wales force could relate to local communities.
	Denis O'Connor also refers to criminal markets, which are very important in the improvement of level 2 activities such as collecting intelligence and dealing with serious organised crime. It is easily explicable that improved level 2 policing would occur with the closer integration of police services in Merseyside and north Wales because, as any police officer or magistrate in north Wales knows, there is an active criminal market that is common to both places. However, it is not easy to understand how a national Wales force will deal with those criminal markets more efficiently than present arrangements, as its structure will take no account of criminal markets.
	To date, the evidence has not been brought forward to support the proposed restructuring. I want my right hon. Friend the Minister to tell me how level 2 policing will be improved. How will there be better intelligence gathering in an all-Wales force? How will serious organised crime be better addressed? Will the fact that criminal markets, which Denis O'Connor describes as "fundamental", are ignored by the present proposal for an all-Wales force make any difference?
	I am concerned that neighbourhood policing may be undermined by an all-Wales force. I have heard and welcome the assurance that the basic command unit will remain the building block of policing, but I have concerns relating to finance, the foundation on which the building blocks stand. In particular, north Wales has invested more in policing than other parts of Wales, and its police precept is higher. If the police precept is standardised across Wales, then the north Wales precept will necessarily be reduced. If that happens, will there be a call for services to move from north to south, where, after all, crime rates are higher? If resources are shifted, it will have a detrimental effect on neighbourhood policing in north Wales.
	In short, the case for an all-Wales force still needs to be made, so that I can make it to my concerned constituents in Wrexham.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I appreciate that there is already a time limit on speeches by Back Benchers in this debate, but if hon. Members are brief, a few more may be able to contribute, even at this late stage.

Stephen O'Brien: The Government claimed that the O'Connor report forced them to restructure our police forces. They started a panicky, so-called consultation exercise, which was too hasty, and now they are providing a financial bung to those who kowtow to them before the ridiculous deadline of Friday.
	A week last Wednesday, I asked the first question at Prime Minister's questions, when I mentioned an extraordinary letter from the chairman of my police authority, who is a Labour councillor. The Prime Minister said that a full consultation is taking place, but that is not what Cheshire police authority expects. In a letter that was copied to the Minister, Councillor Peter Nurse has stated:
	"Policing should be at the heart of our communities and your proposals do nothing to safeguard or develop this. Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities . . . Your direction in respect of Cheshire is severely flawed . . . Restructuring policing with such haste and without considering the long term implications is dangerous and not in the interests of the people of Cheshire."
	I have not yet seen a reply to that letter.
	Two days after Prime Minister's questions, I attended a meeting with Cheshire police authority and the chief constable, where I paid tribute to the hard work of the Cheshire constabulary and all the policemen and women within that force. Performance has been middling, and nobody would say that there is not vast room for improvement, but the force has specialist policing capabilities, and, as we have heard from both sides of the House, it has engaged in fantastic collaboration with not only North Wales police, but Merseyside police, Greater Manchester police, Staffordshire police and, in north Shropshire, West Mercia constabulary.
	My constituents in Cheshire are served by tailor-made collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination, while national threats are met by national strategies. In terms of a criminal market, as it was rather delicately put by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), crime is either local or national. There is no such thing as regional crime. Logic does not impel the Government to design a response that is regionally based rather than nationally based or, as at present, locally based.
	What is the answer? It is not what is on offer in the House today. We are not allowed to maintain the status quo or to look across National Assembly or regional development agency boundaries; instead, we have to look at this precisely as the Government want us to, for the convenience of Ministers and Whitehall mandarins, who no doubt see it as a nice dotted line that will not disturb their administrative flows.
	We need to tell the Government to think again. This hasty timetable can easily be extended and the financial bung can be removed so that there is not a perverse incentive for rushed responses. There should be a proper, considered and serious response so that we get to the point where we have an organisation that is equal to the threats and meets the needs and demands of our local citizens. All the constituents that I represent in south-west Cheshire want good collaboration with north Wales to continue. They do not need a national police force to make that happen, because it happens already. As we have heard from Welsh MPs, a national Welsh force is not needed either, for much the same reasons.
	When my good friend and neighbour, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), asked whether there should there be a national police force, the Minister replied with a categorical no. Let us therefore assume that it is not going to happen. I very much support that. We could, however, expand national organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the British Transport police and the National Criminal Intelligence Service in order to collaborate, co-ordinate and co-operate nationally to deal with national threats, be that through counter-terrorism or anything else.
	Deep down, the consent of the British people is required for us to have confidence in our policing, because policing, as it was originally set up, has to be by the people and for the people, just like our mandate in this place.
	Not for the first time, the Government's proposal has been presented to the House in a panicky way, with no votes and no chance to make corrections—only an opportunity to urge a Minister who is not necessarily going to respond positively, although she is giving a good impression of listening. We are being offered a false prospectus. This is not about improving the service of policing to my constituents; it is about mapping an organisation on to a pre-conceived regional agenda that has nothing to do with meeting the additional threat that my chief constable rightly said has gone national, while continuing the local neighbourhood policing strategy. That is what is so inconsistent, and that is why we should not be shy of holding the Government to account and accusing them of issuing a false prospectus for an agenda and a strategy that is below-the-table stealth regionalisation that we should reject out of hand.

Alistair Burt: Were an educated but ill-informed Martian to wander into this place and ask why this Government were both unpopular and had lost the confidence of professionals in the public services, we could do little better than refer him or her to the subject of this debate. In particular, had the Martian been observing this debate, he or she would conclude that any governing party that had the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) on the Back Benches and the Home Secretary on the Front Bench was working in the wrong direction.
	The Government's handling of this matter is a microcosm of what they get wrong in three respects. First, the consultation process and time scale never do justice to the complexity and seriousness of the issue being considered. Secondly, there is always a hint of menace in the Government if one does not do what they ask. Thirdly, they do not learn from their mistakes.
	First, on the seriousness of the issues to be considered, we have heard plenty of serious speeches tonight. Had the Home Secretary approached the subject on the same basis as many of those speeches, which have called for longer to consider these matters, he would have been heard better. There are serious issues in relation to balancing local matters and larger-scale problems.
	I do not want the Minister of State to talk to me about terrorism. Bedfordshire police authority is still reeling from having £400,000 removed from its budget this year, which was previously paid to it to look after the policing at Luton airport and to cover anti-terrorism measures. Bedfordshire does not need lectures from the Government about the importance of terrorism.
	We have not had answers in relation to serious issues such as accountability, the precept and other matters. Many colleagues have mentioned the operational issue and asked whether forces will be moved from a low-crime area to a higher-crime area, bearing it in mind that everything is run by targets and quotas these days. How can anyone in a low-crime area be sure that that will not happen when those who run the police force must respect the targets imposed by the Home Office?
	The police authorities of the eastern area met today and could agree on nothing except that they did not want a regional force. They had different ideas on everything else. The Bedfordshire police authority voted unanimously last Friday to reject the idea of mergers. The county council passed a motion saying that it did not want any of this. In dealing with policing matters that are so important to all of us, it takes some genius for a Government to get so many people against them who reckon that they have got it wrong.
	Secondly, there is the hint of menace from the Government. There is the time scale that suggests to the police authority that if it does not voluntarily co-operate and come up with a scheme, something will be imposed on it that it might not have wanted. If such an authority does not volunteer something quickly, money that might be available will be taken away. Which responsible senior officer could look at money that is available and decide not to go for it?
	Thirdly, the Government are failing to learn lessons. The last time that the Home Office tried to foist something on Bedfordshire that was ill thought through, had money thrown at it and seemed to deal with a national problem, it was called Yarl's Wood detention centre, which went down in flames because of the ill consideration behind it. The Government do not learn the lessons from how they did things.
	I asked parish councils in my constituency, which are affected by policing, what they thought of the proposals. I received 15 responses, three of which could be described as neither one way nor the other, while 12 were more or less vehemently against. One parish council summed it up succinctly. Mavis Knight, the clerk to Odell parish council wrote to me:
	"Dear Mr Burt, Thank you for your recent letter . . . At a recent meeting, Odell Parish Councillors were somewhat derisory of the whole process and felt it a waste of time to respond with any particular option as they are of the firm opinion that this government has already decided which option is to be adopted. They are probably right, but obviously you are not in any position to agree with that premise!!! Kind regards, Mavis Knight."
	I think that Mavis has got it bang right, and I agree with her absolutely.

David Taylor: I am pleased to contribute briefly to this debate. I am aware that numerous colleagues also want to speak. I have often raised police issues in the Chamber—I have family links with the police, I have been a magistrate and a chair of my local safer communities forum, and my maiden speech concentrated on policing in North-West Leicestershire.
	There is something of an anomaly in the debate tonight. We might have discovered a new phenomenon of the whole being less than the sum of the parts. We have heard many attestations to the quality of individual forces and the progress that has been made in particular areas, yet Opposition Members are quick to criticise, or set at low levels, the progress made in the police service as a whole.
	I am very happy with the progress that we have seen in Leicestershire, where during eight and a half years of Labour government the number of police officers has risen from 1,950 to 2,311. I am reasonably happy about the increases in police grant, although I accept that the proportion of police funding required from council tax payers is probably too high, and causes problems to my constituents in particular.
	An important example of progress—I have supported the Government strongly on it, although I have not always supported what they have done in the public sector—is the new role of community support officers. I have seen them in action in my constituency and throughout Leicestershire. There are 100 or more in the county, and they are doing an excellent job. I am very pleased with the way in which the initiative has worked in practice.
	Leicestershire has a good force. Like every other Member, I have had regular contact with the local policing unit commanders, the area commanders and the chief constable, Matt Baggott, to whom I pay tribute. I pay even more tribute to the outgoing chair of the police authority, David Saville, who has done a magnificent job for eight and a half years.
	That is the good bit. I have a criticism. Why are we changing what is a reasonable and decent force? Leicestershire is well known, rightly, for being an innovative and creative force. It is accessible, open and responsive, as I said earlier in an intervention. It contains some 2,300 officers, serving a population of just under 1 million. How would we benefit from being absorbed, aggregated and expanded into a region containing nearly 4.5 million people and 10,000 officers?
	I understand the argument that a force of a minimum size is necessary to tackle major crimes, serious organised and cross-border crimes, terrorism, civil contingencies, critical incidents and problems of public order. In Leicestershire and the east Midlands, however, there has been collaboration with some of the forces with which a merger may take place at some point. There has been a successful project involving Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, which have jointly investigated drug trafficking, money laundering and the criminal use of firearms. Why, when we are seeing the benefits of exploratory piloting of such collaboration, do we want to run down this path far too fast?
	I am baffled by the requirement for a decision from the constituent police forces by 23 December. The East Midlands strategic board, which represents collaboration by all the existing police authorities, has reluctantly concluded—that is my view, although it may not be the view of the board—that two options might work in practice, the whole-region option and the two-force option. The second option would involve Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire as one force and Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire as the other. At its meeting on Thursday, the day before the deadline, the board concluded that
	"Integral to the cost benefit analysis in respect of either option is a requirement for substantial initial and recurring expenditure that is well beyond any existing, or projected, means of the authorities."
	As was mentioned earlier, the one-off implementation cost of an East Midlands regional force would be £100 million, and there would be a continuing cost in the medium term of £30 million a year. The two-force option would cost £111 million, with a medium-term revenue cost of £50 million a year. I cannot believe that that is a sensible or coherent approach for the policing of the midlands and east midlands areas of England. The constituent authorities must be given more time and allowed to revisit other options than forced mergers. Collaboration and federation have some attractions and some benefits.
	The authorities have been clear from the outset about the need to ensure partner and public consent to any proposed changes. A large-scale survey of people involved in the process has been undertaken. Surprise, surprise, the level of support for what is proposed and for the available options is very low indeed. Why are we going down this path? It will add nothing to the policing of the 4.5 million people of the east midlands or the 1 million people of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

Owen Paterson: I represent North Shropshire and, according to a combination of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary's baseline assessment and the police standards unit, it is the No. 1 police force in the country even though it has the fourth lowest level of funding in the country. For example, we receive £94.38 per head from the Government, while neighbouring North Wales gets £116 and Staffordshire gets £107. I am not whingeing about money. What that means is that if West Mercia received the average of its surrounding forces, it would get £130 per citizen, which would provide an equivalent of 1,600 more police officers—and, hey presto, we would hit the magic 4,000 figure and there would be no need for an argument. The Government's threat to West Mercia is completely bogus on money grounds. The force has 2,380 officers, but if it were funded at the same level as its surrounding forces, it would have 4,000 officers.
	The Home Secretary helpfully said in my local newspaper, the Shropshire Star:
	"I do listen to what people say, but I also have to listen to what the police professionals are saying to me. My No. 1 criteria is the effectiveness of policing."
	However, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) was absolutely roasted in the café under Westminster Hall recently when she wholly failed to answer the questions put to her by Chief Constable Paul West and the chairman, Paul Deneen. She was totally unable to say where the 4,000 figure came from, to identify the statistics that backed it up or to clarify whether the proposal had been peer reviewed.
	I take my hat off to Paul West. He is extremely brave. As a chief constable, he has been put in an impossible position by a request to destroy the force—a force that is his life's work. He told the Under-Secretary that speaking
	"as Chief Constable of the best performing force"
	it would not be possible for West Mercia to provide the same level of performance under a regional structure. Yet we have platitudes and bullying from the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, who has just slipped out. She merely says:
	"West Mercia as a standalone force does not meet HMIC's criteria . . . and is unlikely to deliver sufficient capacity . . . to meet the requirements for provision of protective services to national standards."
	That is utter nonsense.
	Already in West Mercia, we have a force that is going ahead towards strategic status on its own, backed by the remarkable analysis today from Professor Lawrance, statistics professor at the university of Warwick. He comprehensively rubbishes the statistical basis of the 4,000 figure. To provide a flavour of his argument, he refers to page 30 and states:
	"This is an almost perfect example of how not to present a graph"—
	the graph that illustrates the 4,000 figure. He argues that there are
	"no scales on either axis, no data plotted . . . It is almost impossible to obtain any critical understanding from it, except that it is intended to prove that score for protective capability increases with force size. I can see very little hard evidence in pages 30 and 31 to justify the 4000 figure."
	We have had an astonishing series of public meetings—more than 100—with massive support for the prospect of keeping West Mercia strategic. Support comes from all the 13 MPs in the area, all the county councils, all the district councils, 108 parish and town councils, 14 statutory organisations, 11 police community consultative groups and 15 community groups. West Mercia has the capability to move forward. It is going ahead and intends to invest £2.5 million in 95 extra officers. The force has a record of level 2 care in respect of SAS Hereford, it handled Shrewsbury castle and Tern Hill when they were blown up by the IRA and it collaborated successfully with neighbouring forces at the Weston Park IRA summit and the G8 summit.
	I give the force full marks for all of that and I want the Minister to assure me that Paul West and Paul Deneen will be given a fair hearing when they bring these proposals forward. I can assure the Minister that they will be considerably better prepared than the cack-handed proposals of the Government.
	These proposals are totally alien to our traditions. In Elizabethan times, jury service and policing went together and citizens were expected to perform those functions. Ten years after Peel introduced his reforms, the royal commission demanded a national force but Parliament refused because it believed that policing should be rooted in our local communities. On that basis, I bitterly oppose this rushed and unnecessary attempt to bring about the greatest change in our policing in 100 years. It is based on totally bogus statistics, there is no justification for the hurry and it rides roughshod over the No. 1 police force in the country, which, on its own, would be a successful strategic force.

Anne Snelgrove: We in Swindon do not talk about the Wiltshire police; we talk about the Swindon police. That is because we have a good, well run local force that people identify with. They certainly do not identify with Wiltshire constabulary. It is very rare to find a Swindonian who says that they are Wiltshire first and Swindon second, so discussions about Wiltshire constabulary losing its identity do not trouble my constituents. What they want is what they already have: a Swindon police force that responds to Swindon's needs, delivering the low-crime town that we already have. However, my constituents also want the reassurance that, should a threatening incident occur over and above the usual crimes that our force is good at dealing with, an organisation is in place that is able to respond immediately and with sufficient dedicated resources.
	Therein lies the rub. We are pleased with our force's performance on level 1 crimes, but level 2 crimes and major incidents are currently excluded from such measurement. It is unlikely that Wiltshire will do well in this area. With a force of some 1,000 constables, it does not have the capacity to respond to exceptional major incidents, but unfortunately there is little evidence that the police authority accepts that. It is overly concerned with the identity of Wiltshire, to the detriment of pressing national policing needs.
	As Members have alluded to today, such attitudes are bound up with the possible local government review and the precarious position of the county councils. Any suggestion that county identities should go is fought tooth and nail. Sadly, Wiltshire police authority is unlikely to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State, other than to recommend the loose federation of police authorities that it proposed in its last letter to the Home Secretary. Of course, such a structure is largely the same as the existing one; if it were adequate, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary would have said so in its report.
	A federation would be little more than a talking shop, with all the associated inherent problems. Would it have to convene a meeting to decide how to respond to a terrorist attack? If that is the plan, my constituents will not be very impressed. Federations are likely to be dominated by larger forces, and such an arrangement would be much worse than the current one for small forces such as Wiltshire. However, Wiltshire police authority has made it clear that it will sit on the fence and make the Home Secretary take the decision. That will not meet the needs of my constituents, either, and I cannot support the police authority if it decides to follow that course.
	We are not living in the time when the police boundaries were first drawn, and nor are we living in the first Elizabethan age—we are living in the second Elizabethan age. International terrorism and serious and organised crime do not respect historical boundaries. Indeed, they are likely to thrive on them, as they do not reflect current crime patterns. I do not want to have to explain to my constituents that our police force could not respond adequately to a major incident because the police authority's elected members were more concerned with protecting the identity of Wiltshire than with protecting the safety of the people living in it. I have not heard from Opposition parties any proposals that offer a serious and realistic alternative to the Government's proposals for fighting the serious and organised crime that HMIC has identified that we need to fight.
	As I have made clear, the removal of the Wiltshire constabulary is unlikely to trouble the people of Swindon. What my constituents want is good local policing, backed up by the reassurance of strategic policing for major incidents. It may be one of the smallest forces, but Wiltshire consistently outperforms most of the other constabularies in its group, thanks in part to its neighbourhood policing policy. I was pleased to note the reassurances given about that aspect of police work. Indeed, Ministers have gone to great lengths to make it clear that neighbourhood policing can co-exist quite happily within larger strategic forces. They are right to say that neighbourhood teams will be protected if dedicated teams for major incidents are created; that means that individual officers will not be taken away from their local duties. That is what we want in Swindon. Our local police commanders have made excellent contributions to neighbourhood teams in Swindon—they have led the way. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will visit us in Swindon to see what we have done with the local authority, housing, health and education, as well as the police authority.
	I commend my right hon. and hon. Friends the Home Secretary and Ministers on the rapidity of their response to the O'Connor report—[Laughter.] Unlike Opposition Members, I do not find it amusing that we face serious policing difficulties. We do not have the luxury of delaying reform—the last restructuring took 10 years—as they suggest and I am glad that my constituents have the backing of the Government for that restructuring.

Mark Francois: I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, partly because I have been helping to co-ordinate a campaign against the changes among MPs in Essex on a cross-party basis, as I shall explain in a moment. I also look forward to an opportunity to vote against the proposals one way or another in the new year.
	There are several reasons for opposing these ill thought-out proposals, which I shall attempt to summarise in four and a half minutes. First, they enjoy little or no public support, and certainly not in Essex. The Evening Echo newspaper, which covers most of the south of the county, ran a telephone and internet poll that showed that almost 70 per cent. of the respondents want to keep the Essex constabulary as a stand-alone strategic force. Only 4.1 per cent backed the Government's preferred option of a six-county regional merger.
	Secondly, the reforms would make policing more remote. Essex is one of the largest counties in England, with a population of 1.5 million people. It is also very diverse, with a highly urbanised south and a mainly rural north. It is nonsense to suggest that a regional chief constable based in Cambridge would be more in touch with how to police Essex than one based in Chelmsford in the heart of our county.
	Thirdly, there are important issues of accountability. County forces have a sense of identity to which people can relate. If we believe in policing by consent, we must do everything that we can to retain that, and these proposals do not. Fourthly, they raise the prospect of the politicisation of the police. We have a proud tradition in this country that our police are non-political, but if we have 12 regional super-forces, they would inevitably come under stronger political control from the Home Secretary. We had an inkling of that in the debate on terrorism when some chief constables, though thankfully not ours, wrote to MPs to advise us on how to cast our vote. We do not want to go any further down that route.
	Fifthly, the reforms will be expensive for little benefit. The APA has already estimated that the whole exercise could cost more than £500 million. There will be massive costs and it will also lead to an increase in council tax. The standard Essex precept is £105 for policing, compared with £145 in Norfolk. With the greatest respect to my colleagues from elsewhere in East Anglia, Essex council tax payers pay enough council tax as it is. They do not want to pay even more to subsidise policing in other parts of East Anglia.
	Sixthly, the merger is not necessary to combat terrorism, as I pointed out in an earlier intervention, when I quoted my own chief constable in Essex. Seventhly, with all the house building that is likely to take place in Essex, much as I resent it, our policing strength on a pro rata basis will rise well above the 4,000 limit in a few years and thus comply with the Government's arbitrary target.
	Crucially, the proposals are now opposed on an all-party basis in the county. The Essex police authority, which is chaired by Councillor Robert Chambers and is all-party, has now formally come out in favour of the stand-alone option. At a meeting in Chelmsford last Friday, its members voted overwhelmingly for the option that Essex should stand alone as a strategic force, and the authority will submit that opinion to the Home Office to comply with the 23 December deadline. In addition, the chief constable of Essex, Roger Baker, who had previously had some sympathy with the suggestion of a regional merger—as the Minister will know—has now backed the Essex stand-alone option on behalf of the force and the people it protects.
	There is all-party opposition among Essex Members of Parliament. Last week, 15 of the 17 MPs in Essex signed a pledge in defence of the Essex constabulary and expressed their formal support for option 4—that Essex should stand alone. They included the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell)—who is in his place—a Liberal Democrat, and the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), a Labour Member, as well as all the Conservative MPs in the county. Therefore, I may claim genuine cross-party support on the issue. Feelings are running high on both sides of the House tonight, but as far as I know, we are the only county for which MPs from all parties have come together and formally signed a pledge in defence of maintaining our force. The Minister ignores that at her peril. Shortly, I shall write to her and the Home Secretary with a copy of that pledge so that she can see the strength of feeling for herself.
	I have been an MP for only about four years, and this is one of the liveliest debates in which I have participated—certainly in terms of the opening speeches. Again and again, Members on both sides of the House have spoken out against the proposals. In policemen and women, we are talking about a breed of people who do a special job. In essence, they defend us and our constituents. Tonight, MPs of all parties in the House have united to defend them.
	If policing by consent still means anything to the Government, Ministers should listen to elected representatives on both sides of the House who have been sent here to speak on behalf of their police and their constituency. I say to Ministers: think again and make the changes go away.

Bob Russell: I shall be brief because of the time.
	The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) mentioned the support throughout Essex for the retention of Essex as a stand-alone police force. The force is already on top of its case and has 3,200 police officers. When the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety winds up the debate, will she set out the number of officers between 3,200 and 4,000 that would be sufficient for the force to stand alone? The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) made an excellent case for why Kent police should stand alone and I would suggest that it was identical to the argument why Essex police should stand alone.
	Who is exerting pressure by saying that the people of Essex would be better served by a force that was amalgamated with Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, because all the evidence shows that the Essex force operates perfectly well on its own? Will the Minister comment on the Prime Minister's verbal response to the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) that he would ensure that the Government would examine the case for Essex to stand alone if evidence to support that were produced? Will she assure the House that what the Prime Minister said was the truth and that the Government will listen and act if such a case can be made?

Nick Herbert: I have very little time, so if my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not give way.
	We face an absurd situation in which Dorset would be unable to amalgamate with Hampshire, even if it wanted to. Many hon. Members representing Welsh constituencies, including the hon. Members for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones), for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), made the same points in relation to the inability of North Wales police to merge with the Cheshire force, as did the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd), who bravely suggested that Derbyshire might make a foray into Staffordshire.
	The Opposition fear that in proposing the amalgamations, the Government are pursuing the regional agenda that we have seen in planning, health care and fire services. There is a simple remedy for our fears: if the Minister is not pursuing that agenda, she need only agree to a straightforward request to allow mergers across borders. If she will not agree to that, we shall have a clearer idea of what the proposals are about.
	Conservative Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), spoke about the British Transport police, whose position in London is a special one. My hon. Friend's concerns were echoed by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). Having met the British Transport police authority, I believe that there are compelling reasons why the BTP should remain a separate, independent organisation. For example, the London underground extends beyond Metropolitan police force boundaries, the British Transport police pursue mainly level 1 policing functions, and soccer trains are run across county borders.
	The Conservatives accept that some policing functions are best performed at national level. We would not go so far as to take up the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) to extend the powers of SOCA, but we are grateful to him for taking up our proposal for a border police force. I hope that his brave adoption of a Conservative policy will not harm his bid for leadership of his party. We strongly reject the concept of a national police force and we are delighted that the Home Secretary has ruled that out, but we remain concerned that the creation of regional forces will be a step towards greater centralisation, which could lead inexorably to the creation of a national force.
	Several hon. Members questioned the central premise of the report, which is that a force requires at least 4,000 officers to deal with level 2 crime. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) pointed out that John Giffard, the chief constable who is charged with driving the Government's proposal, told Kent police authority that that threshold simply did not matter. The O'Connor report itself makes the point that
	"some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively large forces"—
	with 5,000 or more staff—"received surprisingly low scores." As my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) said, the weakness of the arbitrary figure of 4,000 staff can be seen if one reads the O'Connor report. There is a central graph designed to show that bigger forces are more successful in maintaining protective services—but there are no scales on it. What does that tell us about the integrity of the research? Each force on the graph is represented by an unnamed dot. We do not know how each force performed because that information is not available to us in the report. Perhaps the Minister will agree to report it. We do not believe that a case for amalgamation can be hung upon such tenuous evidence, particularly when the consequences would be so profound.
	My hon. Friends the Members for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) and for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) referred to unequal precepts. Sussex police authority has said that if it were forced to merge with Surrey that would increase the police element of the council tax in Sussex by 20 per cent. West Mercia police authority has said that the regional West Midlands force, taking in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and West Mercia, would lead to council tax falling in Staffordshire, West Mercia and Warwickshire but that in the west midlands it would rise and £30 would be added to the average council tax bill. That would lead to great local resentment at a time when levels of council tax are rising unacceptably. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how she would deal with the problem of equalisation of precepts.
	The Government's case for merging police forces rests on achieving savings that can be ploughed back into enhancing protective services. The Minister, in her interview in The Daily Telegraph this morning, said:
	"The whole aim here, by having larger forces, is to give us some re-organisation of the business so that we can reinvest in these Level Two services".
	The report said that the savings could be £70 million a year.
	How did the report arrive at that figure? It seems to have assumed savings of 1 or 2 per cent. of spending. We do not know what those savings are. How can savings on this scale be properly estimated if the structure of the service and the number of amalgamations is not known? There are no supporting calculations to back up the estimate. The figure appears to have been written on the back of an envelope. Even if £70 million is right, that is just 0.6 per cent. of the total budget of policing, which is £11 billion a year.
	The Government's case is even less convincing since they have no idea of what amalgamations would cost. The report admitted that there would be costs but did not quantify them. The Home Secretary's first letter to chief constables did not mention the costs of amalgamations. His second letter recommended borrowing to meet the costs of merger. It took a third letter, two working days before the debate, for the right hon. Gentleman to recognise that the cost would be significant. He had decided to set aside up to £125 million of capital funding to support authorities and forces committing to an early merger.
	We all know why he had to do that. Costly climb-downs appear to be in fashion on the Government Benches today. Where is the money coming from? It does not appear to be new money. The Home Secretary has raided the budget for police capital spending. The sum of £125 million would have been invested in police services and could have been invested in enhancing protective services. That money will now be spent, wholly unnecessarily, on amalgamating forces.
	We are concerned also about accountability. The Government have not thought seriously about the issue. The O'Connor report points out that the number of basic command units upon which the Government have been relying for suggesting that there will still be elements of local policing has already fallen from 320 to 230 in just three years. The existing size of police authorities is 17 members. I understand that the Government have said that they are willing to increase that size to 23. If a police force area and the population that it serves doubles or trebles, by definition each member of the public has less representation unless the authority is increased in size by the same proportion.
	As Sir Ian Blair said in his Dimbleby lecture last month,
	"Every lesson of every police inquiry, not only the issues that give rise to antisocial behaviour but also those that give rise to criminal activity and to terrorism begin at the most local level, and it is the threat to that local policing that most concerns us about these proposals."
	I wonder whether the Minister will tell us why she has not been keen to pursue the idea of federations, which was supported strongly by hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friends the Members for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) all said that it would be possible for police forces to share functions, and that that may be a much lower-cost option as a way of strengthening strategic services in future.
	Finally, it is the speed at which the debate has been pursued that has most discredited the Government. Hon. Members on both sides of the House complained about that. The manner in which the Government have driven the debate is worrying—there has not been any time for debate, and there has not been a vote. On 5 April—the eve of the election campaign—the Government commissioned the O'Connor report. The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety said in a letter to Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector:
	"The next stage of the review should be low-key in terms of publicity".
	I wonder why she issued such advice just before the election campaign?
	The Government have simply failed to make the case for amalgamation. In 1994, in a debate on the Police Bill, it was said that
	"a wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services . . . will remove local policing further from local people when there is no evidence that it will create a more effective police service."—[Official Report, 5 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 273.]
	That was said by the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), who was then shadow Home Secretary. He was right then, and he is right now.

Ordered,
	That Mr Andrew Mackay be discharged from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Mr David Heathcoat-Amory be added. —[Joan Ryan, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

Alun Michael: My hon. Friend raised some important issues in the debate, which, as he was kind enough to acknowledge, I have been addressing, as has the regulator, Ofcom—which, of course, is accountable to the House rather than to Ministers—ICSTIS and others involved, as well as the companies. I felt that this was such an important issue on which to provide enlightenment that I wrote to all Members of the House on 7 November on several of the telecoms issues that were raising concerns, to explain the actions that were being taken by all involved.
	As far as the issues raised by my hon. Friend are concerned, some of them are for commercial organisations to deal with, whereas others are issues that we have already addressed, either directly or through the regulatory bodies, as he was kind enough to acknowledge at the start of his remarks. He was offered an opportunity to clarify his specific concerns, which he has every right not to do, but it is important in responding to the debate to set the proper context.
	Let us be clear: when such an event occurs, the blame lies on the author of the scam or crime. Measures that have been put in place, such as withholding money for 30 days to allow recompense or fines to bite, are an important means of protection for the future and of making sure that those who contemplate such activity cannot get away with it.
	As my hon. Friend acknowledged, service providers have also been victims. Generosity in dealing with victims is desirable when the service provider is a large company, as he indicated, but it is not enforceable—we cannot require that of a company that is itself a victim, when the problem has arisen because of the ability to use computer equipment that is no part of the provision of BT or any other service provider. We must be even-handed.
	Our duty is to make sure that there is effective and fair regulation, and I am pleased by the steps taken to address that. ICSTIS is consulting on changing the way in which its code deals with refunds. Early next year, it should be possible to get refunds from those telecoms companies that terminate premium rate services, which is an important part of the issue.
	I would be the first to acknowledge that this is a complicated area of commercial activity in which the fast-changing nature of information and communication technologies, and the pace of convergence between technologies, offer a number of challenges. It should also be acknowledged, however, that it is a success story, in terms of both the services now available and the way in which industry is co-operating with Government to deal with the cowboys. In the case of a number of scams, we have effectively created an antisocial behaviour order for the bad guys without tying the good guys up in red tape. To those who think that internet activity and premium-rate services are wholly bad, I say, "Look at the facts and study the reality." Just banning it all, as a colleague said to me last week, would be so disproportionate as to give the Luddites a good name. I know that that is not what my hon. Friend has asked for.

Bob Blizzard: All that I asked for was some justice for the people who had already been victims. I fully acknowledge the tremendous work that my right hon. Friend has done to try and set the system straight, but if we cannot catch the fraudsters and hold them responsible, what is to be done for the victims of the fraud, who only had a contract with BT or some other provider? Can the Government not do something for those victims?

Alun Michael: My hon. Friend misses the point again. We certainly do not blame people who do not possess burglar alarms for the fact that their house has been burgled. We blame the burglar and the criminal. We do not ask the police to recompense residents who have been burgled. One hopes that they will have insurance. If not, we do not then say, "Let the police or someone else recompense them".
	I believe that it was right that a variety of providers, including BT, which my hon. Friend specifically mentioned by name, wrote off considerable sums of money that would have gone straight on to the scammer under the previous system. In that context, BT or any other provider such as NTL would have lost money as a result of the scam. The blame falls on the scam. We should do what we have been doing—create conditions that take the value out of a scam so that the scammers cannot take the money and scarper after a short while. They cannot then reappear and repeat the activity. It is important to understand the steps that we have put in place to ensure that that happens.
	As regards specific bills, I suggest that my hon. Friend speak to the service provider that dealt with the cases in his constituency. It is not for the Government to say, "You"—whether referring to BT, NTL or whatever—"have been a victim of a scam and you should recompense the customer for everything that they repaid." Such a generous response to the fact that individuals have been placed in a position of loss by large industrial organisations may well be a virtue, but it is not appropriate for the Government to require it. That is what I said to my hon. Friend at the beginning. If he had explained the precise target that he was after, I could have been more helpful, perhaps in advance of tonight's debate, about ways of dealing with the problems of his constituents.
	What I want to ensure for the future is that the regulator—in the case of ICSTIS, the delegated regulator, which effectively has authority devolved to it from Ofcom—the Government and the industry can address the issues in such a way as to deal much faster with any scam that appears. We want to be able to seize it, get a grip on it and prevent it from happening. I think that everyone involved would acknowledge that it took some time for people to realise just how costly the scam could be for customers and some time to get up to speed in responding to it. That, however, has now been achieved and I would remind my hon. Friend and the House that—
	The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
	Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes to Eleven o'clock.